{"id":94058,"date":"2022-01-31T14:56:24","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T21:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=94058"},"modified":"2022-01-31T23:20:57","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T06:20:57","slug":"at-seventeen-under-the-cruel-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/01\/at-seventeen-under-the-cruel-sun.html","title":{"rendered":"At seventeen, under the “cruel sun”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
An undeveloped portion of beach in the Kaanapali area of western Maui, much as I remember it from my first visit, decades ago\u00a0 (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"\"<\/a>
The Marriott Maui Ocean Club, where we\u2019re currently staying, is one of dozens of major resorts located in the Kaanapali area. The photo is from the Marriott site, which I hope will allow my borrowing of it as a case of \u201cfair use.\u2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pleased to announce that a new video, an hour and fifty-eight minutes in length, has now gone up on the website of Deseret Book:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Is My Witness? Reflections From the Cast and Crew of Witnesses<\/em>\u201c<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJoin the filmmakers and cast of Witnesses<\/em> for a compelling look into the making of their critically acclaimed film.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is accessible for your viewing at no charge.\u00a0 [ETA:\u00a0 Actually, it appears that you need to get behind the Deseret\/Excel pay wall to view it or that you can gain access to it by enrolling for a free trial subscription.\u00a0 Or something of that sort.\u00a0 My mistake.]<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think that I first came to Maui when I was seventeen, with a group of friends from high school.\u00a0 I had been to Hawaii once before, with my parents at the age of five, but I only remember visiting Oahu and Kaua\u02bbi.\u00a0 I also remember that it all seemed entirely magical to me.\u00a0 On my second visit, during or just following my senior year of high school, we went to Oahu (of course, that being the location of the only major Hawaiian airport at the time), and to Maui and the Big Island.\u00a0 Maybe to Kaua\u02bbi, as well, but I don\u2019t remember that.\u00a0 On Maui, we stayed at the old Pioneer Inn, in L\u0101hain\u0101.\u00a0 It\u2019s still there, and it\u2019s even older.\u00a0 Or, if you will, it\u2019s still very quaint.\u00a0 For some reason that I no longer recall, I spent a lot of time walking alone one day along the beaches adjacent to L\u0101hain\u0101.\u00a0 All the way over to where I now sit, and maybe beyond.\u00a0 But it was very different then.\u00a0 The Ka\u2019anapali resort area was just beginning to be developed at the time, and what I mostly recall is hot sand \u2014 L\u0101 hain\u0101 <\/i>means \u201ccruel sun,\u201d but I thought it very pleasant, and there was always water nearby for when the heat began to be too much \u2014 and green fields extending mauka<\/em> (inland) up the slopes of the West Maui Mountains, which represent the remains of the older, western, volcano that, with the newer Haleakal\u0101 to the east, formed the island.\u00a0 They shimmered in the hot, humid air.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I also remember losing my wallet that day, looking in vain for it over the course of several hours, and having to survive for the rest of our trip off of food money borrowed from friends.\u00a0 About a year later, curiously, the wallet arrived by mail at my parents\u2019 house in southern California, sans return address on the envelope and sans cash within.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

My seventeen-year-old self could scarcely have imagined what Ka\u2019anapali looks like today, let alone what my older self has become.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t imagine overlooking the beach with my wife from an eighth floor patio.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t really contemplate senior citizenship.\u00a0 Ah well.\u00a0 The passage of time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

During a subsequent visit to Ka\u2019anapali in 2014, staying at a different place, I actually wrote a column about religious and historical aspects of the area that remains something of a favorite of mine.\u00a0 I\u2019ve just reread it:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDiving into the afterlife in Hawaii\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I continue to go through old blog entries, culling out items from them that I think will prove useful for certain writing projects that I have in view.\u00a0 Many of them, as it happens, broadly concern religion and science or faith and reason, and I share a few of them here:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because a fact seems strange to you, you conclude that it is not one. . . . \u00a0All science, however, commences by being strange. \u00a0Science is successive. \u00a0It goes from one wonder to another. \u00a0It mounts by a ladder. \u00a0The science of to-day would seem extravagant to the science of a former time. \u00a0Ptolemy would believe Newton mad.<\/b> \u00a0 (<\/span><\/span>Victor Hugo)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A thoughtful comment from the Latter-day Saint philosopher Adam Miller:<\/p>\n

\u201cFaith is more like being faithful to your husband or wife than it is like believing in magic. \u00a0Fidelity is key. \u00a0You may fall in love with someone because of how well they complement your story, but you\u2019ll prove yourself faithful to them only when you care more for the flawed, difficult, and unplotted life you end up sharing with them. \u00a0Faith isn\u2019t the opposite of knowledge. \u00a0Rather, like love, faith perfects knowledge by practicing fidelity to it.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is no more heretical to say the Universe displays purpose, as [Sir Fred] Hoyle has done, than to say that it is pointless, as Steven Weinberg has done. \u00a0Both statements are metaphysical and outside science. \u00a0Yet it seems that scientists are permitted by their own colleagues to say metaphysical things about lack of purpose and not the reverse. \u00a0This suggests to me that science, in allowing this metaphysical notion, sees itself as religion and presumably as an atheistic religion (if you can have such a thing).\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Michael Shallis, \u201cIn the eye of a storm,\u201d\u00a0New Scientist<\/i>,\u00a0101 (1393): 42\u201343 (19 January 1984)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nicholas Rescher (b. 1928), a German-American philosopher of science, historian of philosophy, logician, and epistemologist at the University of Pittsburgh, is the youngest person ever to have earned a doctorate in philosophy from Princeton University. He is the Chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and formerly served as Chairman of Pittsburgh\u2019s Philosophy Department. He has also served as president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, the American Metaphysical Society, the American Philosophical Association, and the C.S. Peirce Society, and is the founder of the American Philosophical Quarterly<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe theorist who maintains that science is the be-all and end-all \u2014 that what is not in science books is not worth knowing \u2014 is an\u00a0 ideologist with a peculiar and distorted doctrine of his own. For him,\u00a0 science is no longer a sector of the cognitive enterprise but an\u00a0 all-inclusive world-view. This is the doctrine not of\u00a0science<\/i>\u00a0but of\u00a0scientism<\/i>.\u00a0 To take this stance is not to celebrate science but to distort it by\u00a0 casting the mantle of its authority over issues it was never meant to\u00a0 address.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Ka\u2019anapali, Maui, Hawai\u02bbi<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 I\u2019m pleased to announce that a new video, an hour and fifty-eight minutes in length, has now gone up on the website of Deseret Book: \u00a0 \u201cWhat Is My Witness? Reflections From the Cast and Crew of Witnesses\u201c \u201cJoin the filmmakers and cast of Witnesses for a compelling look into […]<\/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":[23222,1727,27848,56,259,5691,482,27828,1008,22925,18631,18568,18565,1011,18752,27845,9392,903,9916,5847,5721,5814,15724,5688,21646,11672,921,6384,21713],"class_list":{"0":"post-94058","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-adam-miller","8":"tag-afterlife","9":"tag-black-rock","10":"tag-book-of-mormon","11":"tag-book-of-mormon-witnesses","12":"tag-eight-witnesses","13":"tag-hawaii","15":"tag-immortality","16":"tag-kaanapali","17":"tag-lahaina","18":"tag-lanai","20":"tag-life-after-death","21":"tag-maui","22":"tag-michael-shallis","23":"tag-ndes","24":"tag-near-death-experience","25":"tag-near-death-experiences","26":"tag-next-life","27":"tag-nicholas-rescher","28":"tag-spirit-world","29":"tag-survival","30":"tag-three-witnesses","31":"tag-undaunted-witnesses-of-the-book-of-mormon","32":"tag-victor-hugo","33":"tag-witnesses","34":"tag-witnesses-film","35":"tag-witnesses-of-the-book-of-mormon"},"yoast_head":"\nAt 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