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While bravely fighting a cold, I joined in an Irish podcast

While bravely fighting a cold, I joined in an Irish podcast

Last updated on: July 31, 2026 at 4:36 pm by Dan Peterson

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While bravely fighting a cold, I joined in an Irish podcast 2026-07-31T16:36:54-06:00 Dan Peterson

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A landscape in Ireland, whence originates Mormonism with the Murph: John Fielding / Hay Bluff across the Golden Valley from Dorstone Hill / CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

A new installment of Mormonism with the Murph has gone up online, in a video that lasts roughly one hour and forty-eight minutes: “Are the witnesses of the gold plates EVIDENCE for the Book of Mormon? with Dan Peterson.” I wasn’t in especially good voice on the day that we recorded the episode — I had a lingering cold, as I recall — but some of you may nonetheless be able to endure my maunderings.

Moroni buries the plates of the Book of Mormon in a hill near modern-day Palmyra, New York
(Tom Lovell, LDS.org)

A new article by Jeff Lindsay has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 69 (2026): 289-372: 40 Questions on Latter-day Saint Religion: Sincere, Frequently Respectful, Too Often Polemical:

Review of Kyle Beshears, 40 Questions About Mormonism (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2026). 352 pages; $26.99 (paperback).

Abstract: In 40 Questions, Evangelical pastor Dr. Kyle Beshears tries to help readers understand the doctrines, practices, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He deals with forty questions, each presented as a short chapter, said to reflect numerous dialogues he has had over the years with members of the Church. Sincere efforts to be factual and dispassionate are found in many portions of the book. Nevertheless, its goal is to help non-LDS Christians better rescue Latter-day Saints. As such, a quest for understanding often takes a back seat to criticism. In discussing doctrines or practices, he sometimes preemptively leads with time-worn arguments, then introduces our beliefs, typically without discussing how informed Latter-day Saints often respond to the opposing arguments. Withholding the strengths, the evidence, and the things that add intellectual satisfaction in the lives of serious Latter-day Saints sometimes results in shadow boxing and contributes to the sense of a polemical agenda. This is especially true in the sections on the Book of Mormon.

The Temple of Hephaistos in the ancient Athenian Agora (Wikimedia Commons public domain image).

I would like to call your attention to an upcoming Interpreter Foundation cruise, focused on the journeys of the apostle Paul, that Steve Densley and I will be accompanying in April of next year. A limited number of places remain on the cruise, but they probably won’t last very long — and, as the time for the trip draws nearer, the cruise ship company will likely seek to reclaim any cabins that are still available. So I would recommend that you not hesitate, if you’re at all interested: Journeys of Paul Cruise. At least get your name on the list. (You may be wondering, by the way, who this well-traveled “Paul Cruise” fellow is. And whether, perhaps, his name should be written “Paul Cruz,” instead. Come with us and find out!)

A view of Monet’s garden at Giverny, by Art Anderson (Wikimedia Commons public domain image) Since I have no photographs of Eden or Paradise, this will have to do for now.

If one doesn’t close-mindedly reject the sheer possibility of such phenomena in advance, these and many similar stories are quite intriguing: “When Angels Intervene in Physical Ways” (Meridian Magazine)

I was intending to share here a pair of fascinating recent articles about “deathbed visions” from The Washington Post that I was surprised to be permitted to read a couple of days ago. Now, though, they’re back behind a pay wall. If you’re able to do so, please do have a look at them.

Carol Lynn Pearson in 1981 (Photo from Signature Books)

I learned this morning of the death of Carol Lynn Pearson, a once- and, in some circles, still-prominent Latter-day Saint poet, playwright, and author who became an advocate for gays and particularly for gay Latter-day Saints.

See Peggy Fletcher Stack’s tribute in the Salt Lake Tribune: “Legendary LDS writer and advocate Carol Lynn Pearson dies, leaves a final poem to her fans: 1939-2026: “The Mormon people were truly blessed to have her as a companion,” historian says, “and the institution would have done well to listen to her.””). See, too, this article, published in The Utah Monthly back in February of this year and which manifestly comes from a position that I don’t share: “Carol Lynn Pearson’s “Little Freelance Ministry”: In her diaries, the acclaimed Latter-day Saint writer resists the patriarchy and provinciality of late-twentieth-century Mormonism” (I’ve borrowed the photograph of Sister Pearson, above, from the Utah Monthly article, which, in turn, had borrowed it from Signature Books, the publishers of her diaries. I hope that they will regard it as “fair use.” If not, I’ll happily remove it.)

Sister Pearson’s family announced her passing at the age of 86 yesterday. I never followed her closely, especially in recent decades, but I know both that she took a number of positions with which I disagreed and that she made valuable contributions to Latter-day Saint literature and intellectual life. Requiescat in pace.

A Wikimedia Commons public domain image of Mendenhall Glacier and Mendenhall Lake, near Juneau, Alaska

I’m not especially enamored of the exceptionally hot weather that we’re enjoying right now in Utah County. (It’s a bit of a change from Alaska and British Columbia, where we spent most of the month of July.) But there are some very good aspects to summer in Utah, three of which I’ll mention here: fresh corn on the cob, fresh tomato-cucumber salad, and fresh peaches, which made up most of our dinner on Wednesday night. (Please note: No tithe payers were injured by my consumption of these foods, nor were any donors to the Interpreter Foundation or to the Becoming Brigham project defrauded by my having obtained them.)

The eponymous Christopher Hitchens, speaking in Colorado in 2005. Please notice the cigarette in his right hand and learn from his sad story: Smoking seems to be what eventually did him in. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I close, as I often do, with a small selection of the customary horrors from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:

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