Notes drawn from Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010) [originally published in Dutch as Eindeloos Bewustzijn]:   Consciousness, the subjective experience of an inner self, poses one of the greatest challenges to neuroscience.  Even a detailed knowledge of the brain’s workings and neural correlates of consciousness may fail to explain how or why human beings have self-aware minds.  (cited from the Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist David J. Chalmers, on… Read more

    In 175 B.C., aggressive Jewish reformers found an enthusiastic but dangerous ally in a new Seleucid monarch who called himself Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus believed in Hellenism, yes, but he also thought that Hellenism would provide him with higher tax revenues—revenues that he desperately needed in order to keep his many wars going. Casting his eyes around the empire for money, he found a promising source of untapped cash. The vast funds of the temple at Jerusalem were simply… Read more

    Some passages about the experience of the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, drawn from Ronald E. Romig, Eighth Witness: The Biography of John Whitmer (Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2014):   According to Lucy Mack Smith, one of the ancient Nephites brought the plates to a nearby grove where “the male part of the company, with my husband, Samuel, and Hyrum . . . looked upon them and handled them.”  The eight witnesses were thus five… Read more

    “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble,” Will Rogers (or Josh Billings or Artemus Ward or Kin Hubbard or Mark Twain) is reported to have said.  “It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”   With that wise insight in mind, we take a look at actual data that are relevant to current perceptions:   My friend and BYU departmental colleague John Gee has just recently published a book — I myself… Read more

    This is an interesting article, but it’s also a melancholy reminder of the talent and the insights that we lost when Bill Hamblin passed away, far too young, in December 2019:   “The Sôd of Yhwh and the Endowment”Abstract: Most scholars agree that sôd, when used in relationship to God, refers to the heavenly council, which humans may sometimes visit to learn divine mysteries or obtain a prophetic message to deliver to humankind. Biblical texts on this subject… Read more

    I hereby bring my little trilogy (which began with “Getting to Know Elder Boyd K. Packer” and “A Prolegomenon to ‘Getting to Know Elder Boyd K. Packer'”) to a close with an episode from three decades back.  Perhaps slightly more:   The telephone rang at about 5:00 AM or so.  We had been soundly asleep.  Naturally, the phone wasn’t on the nightstand by my wife where it was supposed to be, so she stood up from the bed and… Read more