Finding a Lost Harp

Last updated on: February 10, 2025 at 10:26 pm By Dan Peterson

Several years ago, as I’ve mentioned here before, I read (and was very impressed by) Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind (2008). Here’s how the blurb on Amazon.com describes the book: In 1991, when her daughter’s rare, hand-carved harp was stolen, Lisby Mayer’s familiar world of science and rational thinking turned upside down. After the police failed to turn up any leads, a friend suggested she call a dowser—a man... Read more

Divine Light (with an aside concerning Hollywood darkness)

Last updated on: February 9, 2025 at 11:16 pm By Dan Peterson

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Are you aware that you can watch Witnesses and Undaunted, right now, at no charge? Do you realize that you could do that tonight? In fact, tonight would be a really good night to watch one or both of them. Maybe an especially good night, if your team loses the Super Bowl. Or, alternatively, if your team wins the Super Bowl. After all, you’ve already got the chips and dips and salsa and root beer. At one point, in... Read more

“Brigham Young and violence”

Last updated on: February 8, 2025 at 3:28 pm By Dan Peterson

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Some critics that I observe — most of them specimens of the type of detractor who finds fault, day in and day out, with virtually everything that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does — have derived a great deal of hostile mirth from President Russell M. Nelson’s admonition that we try to retire terms like Mormon and Mormonism from active use, or, at least, that we try not to sponsor them ourselves. And they’ve really enjoyed... Read more

Federal Funding for Critics of the Church? Really???

Last updated on: February 7, 2025 at 4:11 pm By Dan Peterson

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Newly posted on the never-changing, essentially moribund website of the Interpreter Foundation, in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Prepping for the Last Battle,” written by one Daniel C. Peterson: Abstract: Intellectually acute, deeply learned, brilliantly imaginative, yet popular and easily accessible, C. S. Lewis was arguably the greatest Christian apologist of at least the past century. I believe that Latter-day Saints can benefit greatly from reading him and re-reading him and that those who are... Read more

It just never ends.

Last updated on: February 7, 2025 at 5:51 pm By Dan Peterson

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Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Joseph Smith and Our Preparation for the Lord’s Final Judgment: Essays by George L. Mitton, “Foreword: Eschewing the Ephemeral,” written by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw: “In every conversation I’ve had with George, what impresses me most is his earnestness about the important, enduring matters of life. I didn’t know him when he was younger, but I imagine that he was always that way. In this, he has been a personal model... Read more

Hurrah for Excommunication!

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

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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