{"id":44104,"date":"2017-08-31T11:10:20","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T17:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=44104"},"modified":"2017-08-31T11:10:20","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T17:10:20","slug":"hard-imagine-happening-just-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/08\/hard-imagine-happening-just-chance.html","title":{"rendered":"“It is hard to imagine all this happening just by chance.”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Order, not chaos. Why? \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the charges that has been leveled at the Book of Mormon for generations is that, with Nephi\u2019s building of a temple in the New World, the story contradicts ancient Jewish insistence that a temple can only be built in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The incomparable Jeff Lindsay<\/a> offers a perspective on that claim in this very brief discussion:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAncient Temples, Shrines, and Altars Outside of Jerusalem\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an interview regarding some of his recent research, Matthew Grey addresses an interesting topic that unites the study of both Latter-day Saint history and Latter-day Saint scripture:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSephardic Hebrew in the Book of Abraham\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the well-done 8.5-minute video shown at the \u201cChiasmus Jubilee\u201d that was held on the campus of Brigham Young University on 16 August 2017. \u00a0If you didn\u2019t have the opportunity of being there, you\u2019ll likely enjoy this. \u00a0And if you were<\/em> there, I think you\u2019ll still<\/em> enjoy it:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Discovery of Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a science writer concentrating on mathematics, physics, and cosmology, I have marveled myriad times about what to me is one of the greatest mysteries of all: how, within the immensely hot and dense \u2018soup of particles\u2019 that constituted our universe, a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the quarks suddenly gathered in threes: two \u2018ups\u2019 and a \u2018down\u2019 to form protons and two \u2018downs\u2019 and an \u2018up\u2019 to form neutrons. \u00a0How was it ever possible, I have asked myself, that the charges of these quarks turned out to be exactly 2\/3 for an \u2018up\u2019 and -1\/3 for a \u2018down\u2019 \u2014 with not even the tiniest of tiny errors, so that the proton would miraculously match the opposite charge of the electron (-1) and the neutron\u2019s charge would be precisely zero: just what is necessary to form atoms and molecules? \u00a0How did such an incredibly improbable event ever happen without some calculated act of creation? \u00a0And further, how did the masses of the elementary particles turn out to have the perfectly precise ratios needed so that our world of atoms and molecules could exist at all? \u00a0How did the forces of nature \u2014 gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces acting inside nuclei, as well as the mysterious \u2018dark energy\u2019 that permeates space \u2014 receive just the right strengths they need to maintain a universe that has the required stability and neither collapses onto itself nor explodes before life has a chance to evolve? \u00a0It is hard to imagine all this happening just by chance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Amir D. Aczel, Why Science Does Not Disprove God<\/em> (New York: \u00a0William Morrow\/HarperCollins, 2014), 2-3.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 One of the charges that has been leveled at the Book of Mormon for generations is that, with Nephi\u2019s building of a temple in the New World, the story contradicts ancient Jewish insistence that a temple can only be built in Jerusalem. \u00a0 The incomparable Jeff Lindsay offers a perspective on that claim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"It is hard to imagine all this happening just by chance."<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    One of the charges that has been leveled at the Book of Mormon for generations is that, with Nephi's building of a temple in the New World,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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