The Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma: Revisions of Humean thought, New Empirical Research, and the Limits of Rational Religious Belief

This paper is the product of an interdisciplinary, interreligious dialogue aiming to outline some of the possibilities and rational limits of supernatural religious belief, in the light of a critique of David Hume’s familiar sceptical arguments -- including a rejection of his famous Maxim on miracles -- combined with a range of striking recent empirical research. The Humean nexus leads us to the formulation of a new ”Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma’, which suggests that the contradictions between different religious belief systems, in conjunction with new understandings of the cognitive forces that shape their common features, persuasively challenge the rationality of most kinds of supernatural belief. In support of this conclusion, we survey empirical research concerning intercessory prayer, religious experience, near-death experience, and various cognitive biases. But we then go on to consider evidence that supernaturalism -- even when rationally unwarranted -- has significant beneficial individual and social effects, despite others that are far less desirable. This prompts the formulation of a ”Normal/Objective Dilemma’, identifying important trade-offs to be found in the choice between our humanly evolved ”normal’ outlook on the world, and one that is more rational and ”objective’. Can we retain the pragmatic benefits of supernatural belief while avoiding irrationality and intergroup conflict? It may well seem that rationality is incompatible with any wilful sacrifice of objectivity. But in a situation of uncertainty, an attractive compromise may be available by moving from the competing factions and mutual contradictions of ”first-order’ supernaturalism to a more abstract and tolerant ”second-order’ view, which itself can be given some distinctive intellectual support through the increasingly popular Fine Tuning Argument. We end by proposing a ”Maxim of the Moon’ to express the undogmatic spirit of this second-order religiosity, providing a cautionary metaphor to counter the pervasive bias endemic to the human condition, and offering a more cooperation- and humility-enhancing understanding of religious diversity in a tense and precarious globalised age

End of Life and Saving Souls: Should a Desire for Converts Influence End-of-life Ethics?

In 1 Timothy 2:3, Paul states “God our Savior… wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (NIV). In keeping with God’s desire for the salvation of all, Christians should work towards that goal. From an evangelical Christian perspective, upon death, the status of one’s soul is fixed, bound either for heaven or hell. This perspective should deeply influence our interactions with unbelievers, not only encouraging us to share the gospel, but also giving us an incentive to delay their physical death. Indeed, according to 2 Peter 3:9, the reason God is delaying the final consummation of all things is because “he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Similarly, Christians should desire to avoid taking away an individual’s chance at salvation. This argument can be a powerful (though not necessarily all-trumping) argument against killing, often used in the context of pacifist or anti-death penalty argumentation, but I contend this argument is also an important consideration for end-of-life ethics in a medical context

Theophanis the Monk and Monoimus the Arab in a Phenomenological-Cognitive Perspective

Two brief Late Antique religious texts, respectively by the monk Theophanis and by Monoimus the Arab, present an interesting problem of whether they embody the authors’ experience, or whether they are merely literary constructs. Rather than approaching this issue through the lens of theory, the article shows how phenomenological analysis and studies of living subjectivity can be engaged with the text in order to clarify the contents of introspective experience and the genesis of its religious connotations. The analysis uncovers a previously unnoticed form of embodied introspective religious experience which is structured as a ladder with a distinct internal structure with the high degree of synchronic and diachronic stability. This approach also helps one identify the specific introspective techniques in the canonical and non-canonical literature of early Christian tradition, as related to the concepts of “ theosis ” and “ kenosys ”, as well as to suggest some neurological correspondents of religious cognition

TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE, AND THE SUPERNATURAL

ABSTRACT: This article critically discusses the scientific status of transpersonal psychology and its relation to so-called supernatural claims. In particular, analysis focuses o

Religion Made Flesh: Modernity, Ideology, and the New Sciences of the Brain

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the human brain has become a unique and popular explanatory object. Drawing on concepts from the recent boom of the neurosciences, scholars and popular writers have sought to explain various cultural phenomena—including gender, politics, and religion—as the products of underlying cognitive processes. The human brain represents a unique rhetorical device because it serves as a bridge, in such explanations, between human culture and the seemingly objective laws of nature. This dissertation analyzes brain-based explanations of religion, with a focus on the recent research program known as the cognitive science of religion. It frames the cognitive science of religion as the most recent in a series of historical attempts to essentialize religion, or explain the fundamental truth of religion by identifying a single element that transcends the local specificities of language, culture, and history. Through a series of close readings, this dissertation demonstrates how cognitive theories of religion posit a cognitive fundament where the absolute truth of religion might reside. The central argument of the dissertation is that it is categorically impossible to essentialize religion as an inherently cognitive phenomenon. This dissertation responds to contemporary reformers of religious studies including Ann Taves, Edward Slingerland, and Robert McCauley. Drawing on concepts including neuroplasticity, morphospace, and dynamic systems theory, it argues for a pluralistic epistemological approach to the study of religion.Doctor of Philosoph

Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time

Digital media everyday inscribe new patterns of time, promising instant communication, synchronous collaboration, intricate time management, and profound new advantages in speed. The essays in this volume reconsider these outward interfaces of convenience by calling attention to their supporting infrastructures, the networks of digital time that exert pressures of conformity and standardization on the temporalities of lived experience and have important ramifications for social relations, stratifications of power, practices of cooperation, and ways of life. Interdisciplinary in method and international in scope, the volume draws together insights from media and communication studies, cultural studies, and science and technology studies while staging an important encounter between two distinct approaches to the temporal patterning of media infrastructures, a North American strain emphasizing the social and cultural experiences of lived time and a European tradition, prominent especially in Germany, focusing on technological time and time-critical processes

The Becoming

A child wanders into a thicket of northern red oak and black raspberry to soothe the wounds of the past. The child is plagued with the malaise of the soul, otherwise know as major depressive disorder, and seeks to heal. As the forest is a reservoir for encountering extrovertive mystical experiences in the form of epiphanies, the child sensitively roams the moist woodland terrain to gain insight into the sacred Truths of Being – notably of wholeness, love, awareness, and death of the ego and time – in order to heal his psyche and soul, and to access the Greater self. The child seeks for mystical experiences in nature through epiphanic phenomena by virtue of developing a ritual practice as a form of pilgrimage in the woodland, known as the mystic’s pilgrimage. The pilgrimage involves: entrance to site, path, arrival, mindfulness meditation, observation, documentation, creation, prayer, and departure from site; a complementary meditation hut, known as the mystic’s hermitage, is crafted for contemplation and meditation during the solitude. The ultimate goal of The Becoming is for the child to emerge from this pilgrimage a more peaceful, self-aware, and knowledgeable individual. This thesis is partially a feat of escapism – not in the sense of cowardice – rather, an opportunity to seek solitude from artefacts of anthropological phenomena and the ego in an in-situ, wiigwaam-esque dwelling constructed from the immediate resources of the forest. An act of deep observation, anecdotes and thick multimedia documentation of relevant abiotic and biotic material, ecological relationships, natural phenomena and mystical experiences will be developed to relay the intimate mystical experiences while acting out the pilgrimage in the woodland

The social life of placebos: proximate and evolutionary mechanisms of biocultural interactions in Asante medical encounters

The Social Life of Placebos is an interdisciplinary study of the evolution of placebogenic responses – beneficial ones activated by psychosocial triggers -- and their elicitation in Asante medical contexts. Based on an extensive literature review in social, cultural, and medical studies and over 26 months of intensive research in rural Ghana, West Africa, it examines the therapeutic efficacy of Asante medical encounters by analyzing rites of care-giving within an evolutionary framework. Section 1 investigates why evolutionary processes appear to have made human physiology susceptible to psychosocial manipulation, what the health consequences of that susceptibility are in modern environments, and how culturally specific expectations and healing rituals might dampen or amplify that susceptibility. Because of key transitions in human evolution, the fitness consequences of sociality have increased rapidly and created the conditions whereby endogenous mechanisms have become responsive to sociocultural conditions. This explanation helps us better understand why culturally specific rituals can elicit powerful beneficial (placebo) and adverse (nocebo) physiological responses. Using a mixed methodology of physiological data and ethnographic case studies collected from hundreds of Asante medical encounters, Section 2 illuminates evolutionary and proximate processes in Asante contexts of care-giving and healing rituals in detailed chapters on pain, emotion, and stress. It examines the social and cultural resources and techniques that Asante health practitioners rely on for pain management in contexts where no pain medication is available. It analyzes the biocultural interactions that can take place when healers modify patient perceptions, emotions, and expectations. The dissertation concludes with biometric evidence that Asante indigenous ritual healing ceremonies actually promote significant entrainment and relaxation effects

The Efficacy of Late Antique Spiritual Practices for Family-Based Adolescent Faith Formation

Approximately 70 percent of evangelical teenagers drop out of church and stop practicing their faith during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Research indicates that cultural trends are less to blame for these negative trends than the utilization of ineffective methodologies for faith formation. This dissertation argues that the utilization of modern learning techniques in conjunction with adapted spiritual formation practices from Late Antiquity, within the context of family, and coordinated by a church community best ensures a stable and enduring faith for the next generation. Section 1 addresses the problems inherent to adolescent faith formation within the context of family and church spheres. Section 2 reviews alternate approaches to adolescent faith formation. Section 3 proposes a solution based on: (1) the art and science of learning—recent research into the science of cognition and learning that challenges entrenched educational theories and systems; (2) the leveraging of Family Systems Theory in support of spiritually beneficial adolescent outcomes; (3) a better understanding of the unique wiring of the next generation as represented by Generation Z; (4) the benefit of applying E.P.I.C. teaching practices for adolescent formation; and (4) the efficacy of Late Antique Christian practices for spiritual formation, especially as adapted for utilization within the context of the family unit. Sections 4 and 5 outline the specifications for a non-fiction book that will challenge parents to take ownership of their children’s spiritual formation, educating them in the efficacy of ancient methodologies for spiritual formation, and then equipping them to effectively adapt ancient practices within their own family context. Section 6 reflects on potential further research. Section 7 is the Artifact itself