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A brief note on one way of thinking about life after death

A brief note on one way of thinking about life after death

Last updated on: September 24, 2025 at 9:58 pm by Dan Peterson

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A brief note on one way of thinking about life after death 2025-09-24T21:58:31-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Cover art by Greg Newbold from “Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days: The Standard of Truth: 1815–1846.” I hope that what I’m doing here with it will count as acceptable “fair use.” Among other things, I’m struck by the painting because it’s in the style of Grant Wood, which I love.

A piece that I wrote for Meridian Magazine went up this morning; “DNA and the Book of Mormon: Putting the Science in Perspective.” It might perhaps be worth a look.

In other news: We filmed today at three locations outside and around the North Visitors Center in Nauvoo — the red brick one — and in front of the former home of Sidney Rigdon and Phebe Rigdon and then, again, inside the North Visitors Center. It was a fairly long day. I think, though, that we captured some pretty good material. I hope and I believe that this Becoming Brigham series is going to turn out well, and that it will perhaps do some good.

C. C. A. Christensen, “Crossing the Mississippi on the Ice” (19th century), depicting the commencement of the exodus of the Latter-day Saints from Nauvoo, Illinois, abandoning their temple and their city, toward the Great Basin West. The temple is visible against the distant horizon, in the upper right-hand corner. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I try from time to time to be of practical help to my readers, and I’m going to make another effort in that direction tonight, with comments about food and lodging in Keokuk. I’ll be candid: Keokuk is, to me, a distinctly drab and rather down-market town, and it offers very little in terms of hotels and restaurants. However, Nauvoo itself isn’t exactly famous for its infinitude of hotels or its unlimited collection of dining choices — so I’m guessing that more than a few Latter-day Saint visitors end up eating and staying outside of “the city of Joseph.” Which is where I come in, with a recommendation and a warning:

First the recommendation, on food: Three of us went out tonight, looking for a bite to eat. We didn’t want much, but we definitely didn’t want fast food for a second night in a row. (I don’t know what they had on Monday night; I wasn’t here.) We drove quite a bit looking for a good place, but found nothing of interest. Then, happily, we noticed The Hawkeye Restaurant just off from the main drag. It was pretty good. I can recommend it to people who are looking for a meal in this area.

Now for the warning, which concerns lodging: We are currently staying in Keokuk’s Hampton Inn. (Incidentally, it’s not bad.) Our group spent Monday night — before I arrived — in the Baymont Hotel. They checked out the next morning. They hated it. They’ve told me that it’s perhaps the worst hotel they’ve ever stayed in, that it was dirty and in disrepair. So, pending major changes there, I would warn Latter-day Saints who visit this area –and, of course, any other tourists as well — against the Baymont Hotel in Keokuk.

“The Nauvoo Temple in Ruins” (Frederick Piercy, 1853; Wikimedia Commons public domain image) The Latter-day Saints had left Nauvoo only about seven years previously, driven out by mobs. An arsonist set fire to the temple and then it was hit by a tornado. When Brigham Young was given the news, he was actually glad. He didn’t want the temple to be desecrated.

It’s been another very long day, and we have a very early morning ahead of us. So I’m using some notes for this blog entry that already exist in my files, in the wan hope of getting enough sleep tonight. Anticipating a public lecture in Mesa, Arizona, that I was apparently about to give in March or so of 2009, a vocal former Latter-day Saint who had, it seems, turned atheist wrote to me. Among other things, he said that

I’m sure your presentation will be interesting and engaging, but with all due respect, from a secular evidentiary point of view, you would first have to establish that it is even possible to live again after ones [sic] own death.

Here is a short set of notes that, it seems, I wrote in response to him (though I don’t remember at this distance in time whether I used them anywhere or incorporated them into a reply to him):

I don’t agree. That’s one possible approach, certainly, but it’s not the only one and, in this case, it’s not at all the best one. (However, I would recommend to you the Claremont philosopher Stephen Davis’s fine book Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection, in which he not only considers the historical evidence for the literal resurrection of Jesus but the intelligibility of the claim itself. This was the book that got me thinking along the lines that I’ll briefly touch upon in Mesa, although there won’t be much if any of Davis in this particular fireside.)

From the other side, though, if convincing proof could be given that Jesus rose from the dead — if, say, you had actually seen him dead and then, three days later, conversed with him alive — that would settle the question.

This is nicely illustrated in the ancient Christian pseudo-Clementine literature, in which Clement, a young student of philosophy in Rome, having despaired of any meaningful resolution of the endless back-and-forth about whether life after death is possible, encounters an apostolic eyewitness of Christ’s resurrection at a street meeting near his home. A reliable eyewitness, he decides, is worth much more than any number of theoretical disputes.

Apart from the gilded vertical trumpet-bearing Angel Moroni atop the spire — the angel on the historic predecessor building was horizontal — the Nauvoo Illinois Temple (dedicated in 2002) is an exact reproduction, externally, of the original Nauvoo Temple, which was dedicated in 1844. (LDS.org)

Finally, here’s a forthright answer to a very important question. And, of course, it comes right out of the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “Are Religious People Happier Than The Non-Religious?” If they are happier then, quite obviously, that’s bad. Very bad. It must be. Because, religion, remember, poisons everything.

Posted from Keokuk, Iowa

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