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<\/a>If you go to the home page of the Interpreter Foundation, you will find that the page has been fundamentally redesigned. \u00a0It may take a while for you to become wholly accustomed to it, but I hope that you\u2019ll come to appreciate it. \u00a0The changes are very far from merely superficial and cosmetic. \u00a0I\u2019m very grateful to Allen Wyatt and Alan Sikes and the others from our side who saw this through to its current results.<\/p>\n
And you will also find a new article there: \u201cIntellectual Colonialism and Air Bud Theology: More on Queer Theory and the Church of Jesus Christ,\u201d<\/a> written by Gregory L. Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n Abstract:<\/strong> Taylor Petrey\u2019s <\/em>Queering Kinship in the Mormon Cosmos attempts to \u201cqueer\u201d Latter-day Saint concepts to create an account more congenial to queer theory, a postmodern philosophy and approach to texts. Here the aim is to destabilize and deny sexual essentialism, the law of chastity, and the eternal destiny of humanity as understood by the Saints. The words of Church leaders are misrepresented through omission and reorganization. Readings of Latter-day Saint scholars and scripture likewise suffer distortion and inaccurate representation. The work betrays several double standards, including the intellectual colonialism inherent in the efforts to distort and thereby appropriate Latter-day Saint culture and writings for its own purposes. Means to avoid this negative pattern are suggested, including rigorous honesty in textual claims and the participation of the scholarly community in effective peer review of irresponsible or misleading work.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019ve drawn several times previously here from the 2024 book Lucid Dying: The New Science Revolutionizing How We Understand Life and Death<\/em><\/a><\/span> (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2024), which was written by the Anglo-American physician and medical researcher Sam Parnia, M.D., Ph.D. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As I\u2019ve mentioned here before, <\/span>Dr. Parnia is an associate professor of medicine at New York University\u2019s Langone Medical Center, where, additionally, he serves as director of research into cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which is his area of specialized medical research. He also directs the Human Consciousness Project at the University of Southampton, in England. \u00a0He received his medical degree in 1995 from the medical school of King\u2019s College London and then earned a doctorate in cell biology from the University of Southhampton in 2007. \u00a0He also received fellowship training in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of London and at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.<\/p>\n I bring Dr. Parnia up here again for a quite specific reason: \u00a0Some skeptics refuse to consider what are commonly labeled near-death experiences or NDEs as evidence that at least hints at the survival of human consciousness or personality beyond death because, they say, people who have undergone NDEs were, by definition, not really dead. \u00a0If they had really been dead, the reasoning goes, they wouldn\u2019t have returned. \u00a0Instead, they were \u2014 again by sheer definition \u2014 only near<\/em> death. \u00a0Accordingly, their reported experiences can have no real bearing on our understanding of death and dying, let alone on our ideas of what happens to human consciousness beyond death.<\/span><\/p>\n I suspect that, for many who have actually spent a considerable amount of time studying near-death experiences, this will seem a bit sophistical. \u00a0It certainly seems so to me<\/em>. \u00a0In fact, it reminds me more than a little of pre-modern physics as it was done in the Aristotelian tradition (in other words, not only by Aristotle himself but by such brilliant thinkers as Ibn S\u012bn\u0101 or Avicenna), which basically involved reasoning in a vacuum about the meanings or applications of words, using logical deductions from definitions without performing any experiments, let alone stepping into a laboratory.<\/p>\n It is at least partially for that reason, I think, that Dr. Parnia himself prefers to call NDEs \u201crecalled experiences of death\u201d or REDs. \u00a0And I\u2019m beginning to recognize the value of his neologism\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He considers the term near-death experience<\/em> inaccurate since, in his considered and data-driven opinion, death is a surprisingly (though, obviously, not an indefinitely or infinitely) reversible process. He also uses the phrase after-death experiences<\/em> as a preferred term, explaining that these experiences occur after the heart, lungs, and brain have ceased functioning during a period of cardiac arrest. By describing them as \u201cafter-death experiences\u201d or \u201crecalled experiences of death\u201d he is highlighting his position that such experiences, when properly classified and accurately understood, do indeed occur during a state of actual death rather than merely near death. \u00a0Please remember that his research focuses on the experiences of patients during cardiac arrest, which is biologically synonymous with death, as opposed to the more general term \u201cnear-death.\u201d \u00a0(It\u2019s probably also worth noting that Dr. Parnia describes himself as non-religious.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Finally, it\u2019s time to revisit the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122 for a trio of Terrible Tidbits of Terror:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>\n
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