Dan Peterson
Patheos
United States
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Past articles by Dan:
Why in the world go to Iran?
Why, a reader of a previous entry asks -- yes, this blog has at least one other reader beside you -- would anybody even want to go to a dangerous, fascist, theocratic, totalitarian place like the Islamic Republic of Iran? To which, with all due respect, my response is: Really? Seriously? → Read More
Where is or was the tomb of Jesus?
Professor William J. Hamblin and I published this column in the Deseret News for 1 April 2016: The essential message of Easter is that Jesus rose from the tomb. Visiting the tomb of Jesus began on the first Easter, when some of Jesus’ female disciples — and later Peter and John and others — → Read More
“Can modern people believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ?”
Here is my 2019 Easter column for the Deseret News: "Can modern people believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ?" *** I published the Easter article below in the 24 March 2016 issue of the Deseret News: Since the appearance of the Father and the Son to Joseph Smith in the → Read More
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, C.S. Lewis, and the hope of Easter
I published this article in the Deseret News on 13 April 2017: A decade ago, in February 2007, came the dramatic announcement that Jesus’ ossuary or “bone box” (and perhaps even his bones) had been found in Jerusalem’s southern neighborhood of East Talpiot. Scholars overwhelmingly rejected the → Read More
An astronomical breakthrough, a moral quagmire, and the difficulty of economics
This is pretty astonishing, something that would have been essentially unimaginable not very many years ago: New York Times: "Black Hole Image Revealed for First Time Ever: Astronomers at last have captured a picture of the darkest entities in the cosmos." Nature: "Black hole pictured → Read More
“Everywhere science is enriched by unscientific methods and unscientific results”
A few days ago, I posted an entry on this topic under the title "On “the most significant event in the history of life on Earth”": "New fossils may capture the minutes after the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact:A North Dakota site appears to hold fish, other organisms swiftly buried in the → Read More
“To defeat ISIS, we need to destroy its extremist ideology.”
This item was kindly brought to my notice by Matthew Wheeler: "'To defeat ISIS, we need to destroy its extremist ideology.' A pertinent message from Sayyid Shaykh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi on how repel the tide of extremism through traditional, Sunni Islam." It's possible -- I can't recall -- → Read More
“Simple” life? There doesn’t appear to be any such thing.
Living matter, unlike non-living matter, assimilates and processes energy, stores and manages information, and replicates or reproduces itself. In this regard, whales and roses and snakes and hawks and redwoods are dramatically different from the inanimate nature around them. Carrying out these common → Read More
Brigham Young opposed a then-fashionable scientific form of racism
In his important book Religion of a Different Color, Paul Reeve recounts an interesting episode involving Brigham Young: An early mixed-race (Black and American Indian) member of the Church named William McCary -- a rather tenuous and somewhat erratic and even unbalanced fellow, as it turned out, → Read More
“New Zealand’s Darkest Day”
O you who believe! Seek help in patience and prayer. Truly God is with the patient. And do not say of those who are killed in the path of God "They are dead." Rather, they are alive, although you do not perceive them. And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger, and loss of wealth → Read More
A note on the self-limited nature of science
It should be fairly obvious from my blog that I'm interested in science. In fact, my earliest aspiration was to be an astronomer. Really. And I mean really early. When I was five -- and for some time thereafter. Moreover, had my poor eyesight not blunted my enjoyment of the night sky, I might → Read More
“Top 20 Evils You’re Responsible For By Believing the Book of Mormon”
It's time that you folks out there who accept the authentic antiquity of the Book of Mormon frankly acknowledge your wickedness. This may be strong medicine, but, someday, you'll thank Steve Smoot for his brutal honesty: "Top 20 Evils You’re Responsible For By Believing the Book of Mormon" → Read More
An ancient American book that was dismissed as a fraud but that now seems to be genuine
I was very pleased with the return of the Interpreter Radio Show to K-Talk (1640 AM) on Sunday night. Steve Densley, Craig Foster, and Matt Bowen did an excellent job of discussing Craig's recent Interpreter article ("Assessing the Criticisms of Early-Age Latter-Day Saint Marriages") during the first → Read More
The evils of religion in North Korea?
Available via the website of the Interpreter Foundation, a podcast that you might find interesting: "The Fourth Gospel," with Joshua Matson "Even a casual, first-time reader quickly notices that the Fourth Gospel, or the Gospel of John, is different than the other New Testament gospels. → Read More
Why go to church?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has issued a new, official Gospel Topics essay on the question of the geographical setting for events in the Book of Mormon: "Book of Mormon Geography" It's very welcome. *** Not infrequently, I read comments from purportedly → Read More
New Genetic Tricks
The 19 January 2019 issue of The Economist (pages 76-77) contains a very interesting article under the title of "Extending the genetic code: Adding new DNA letters make novel proteins possible: One such, a cancer drug, is now in development." Here are some of my notes from it, the first two paragraphs → Read More
A world with neither freedom nor morality?
“Humans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals. At the same time they never cease trying to escape from what they imagine themselves to be. Their religions are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed. In the twentieth century, the utopias of Right → Read More
The Church Established the Bible, Not Vice Versa
I published this article in the Deseret News back on 13 May 2010: The earliest Christians didn't believe in the New Testament. They couldn't. It didn't exist yet. When Paul praises young Timothy because "from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto → Read More
How incomprehensibly old IS the universe?
The January/February 2019 issue of Discover includes a fascinating article by Corey S. Powell entitled "The Constant Fight: Behind the astronomical dispute that's splitting apart the cosmos." I'll try to summarize it here, briefly -- at least, the bottom line. If you're interested in understanding the → Read More
C. S. Lewis and J. B. Phillips: An Unexpected Meeting
I have been a fan of J. B. Phillips's The New Testament in Modern English since I first bought it while in my twenties. For a glimpse of the reason why I like it, compare Acts 8:18-23 in the King James Version to the Phillips version: And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' → Read More