2023-05-25T17:49:37-06:00

    I’ve watched with amused fascination the responses on the Peterson Obsession Board to my recent post entitled “Hearts of Darkness.”  (“Amused fascination” has been my usual reaction to the PO Board over its fifteen or so years of existence — although, sometimes, when its malicious fictions cross over into libel and slander, my attitude can become a bit darker.) I’ve never understood the gratification that some apparently derive from ascribing absurd views to others and then mocking those... Read more

2023-05-23T22:56:49-06:00

    As I’ve said, I’m copying out some of the notes that I’ve been taking from my reading over the past while, and I think that some of you might find them of occasional interest.  For this particular blog entry, my theme concerns whether or not mind is wholly reducible to brain. I start with a quotation from the famous Cornell University astrophysicist and science popularizer Carl Sagan (1934-1996), who was a vocal atheist: My fundamental premise about the... Read more

2023-05-25T10:13:47-06:00

    Another note, inspired by John W . Welch, et al., eds., Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork: Covenant Communications, 2017), and very relevant to the two Interpreter articles that I mentioned in my blog entry for last Friday: “What Is It to Speak with the Tongue of Angels?”  (143-145) 2 Nephi 32:2 seems to suggest an implicit doctrine of human deification in the Book of Mormon — a text from which, critics have alleged, the... Read more

2023-05-23T12:07:51-06:00

    One of the speakers in our sacrament meeting today referred briefly to the story of John Colter, who appears to have been the first person of European descent to have explored the area of today’s Yellowstone National Park and to have seen the Grand Tetons, and  who is often termed the first of the “mountain men.” John Colter (or Coalter or Coulter) was born in the first half of the 1770s in Virginia.  From 1804 to 1806, he... Read more

2023-07-26T13:39:44-06:00

    I think that I failed to mention this item when it appeared on Wednesday.  It was first delivered on Saturday, 14 March 2015, during the Interpreter Foundation’s 2015 conference on Exploring the Complexities in the English Language of the Book of Mormon: Conference Talks:  “Charity, Priest, and Church versus Love, Elder, and Congregation: The Book of Mormon’s connection to the debate between William Tyndale and Thomas More,” given by Jan J. Martin Thomas More and William Tyndale were... Read more

2023-05-20T15:45:21-06:00

    I discovered late last night that a lengthy interview that I did a few weeks back for the Ireland-based podcast Mormonism with the Murph is now up on line, in two parts: “Evidence for the Book of Mormon with Dan Peterson” “Responding to criticisms against the Book of Mormon with Dan Peterson”     As has happened every single Friday since early August 2012, a new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and... Read more

2023-05-18T12:12:55-06:00

    But, first, a new piece of mine appeared yesterday in Meridian Magazine:  “Enduring Lessons from the Raising of Lazarus.”  I hope that you’ll see some value in it.   ***   I’m copying out, for my notes, passages that struck me while re-reading Eugene England, Brother Brigham (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), some time back in preparation for the Interpreter Foundation’s planned Six Days in August film project.  I see nothing wrong with sharing them here:   On... Read more

2023-05-17T23:55:19-06:00

    “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.”  (Psalm 27:4 KJV)   I love the temple, and I love temples.  A few weeks ago, my wife and I drove out to take a nighttime look at the newly completed Saratoga Springs Utah Temple, across... Read more

2023-05-16T16:38:38-06:00

    A very worthwhile essay from two of my favorite commentators at the Deseret News, Jacob Hess and Hal Boyd:  “Perspective: What’s behind American media’s unhealthy fixation on ‘Mormons, Inc.’?”     The oldest currently known copy of a biblical text is to be found on what are commonly called the “Hinnom Scrolls.”  Discovered in 1979-80 during excavations led by Gabriel Barkay, of Tel Aviv University, in a series of burial caves located not far to the southwest of... Read more

2023-05-15T22:21:53-06:00

    This review essay, written by Jeff Lindsay, just went up on the blog of the Interpreter Foundation:  “Brent J. Schmidt’s Relational Faith: An Essential Book for Understanding the New Testament Meaning of “Faith” and for Better Appreciating the Beauty of the Restoration”   As did this archived recording of our weekly AM radio program:  Interpreter Radio Show — May 7, 2023 In the 7 May 2023 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show, Terry Hutchinson, Spencer Kraus, Hales Swift, and Brent... Read more

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