The Dilemma of the Pastor in a Post-Modern Society

To what extent can the Bible, the Christian message, and especially the ministers, as their public representatives, have an impact upon our post-modern society? As public role models of God’s pathos, some leading biblical prophets demonstrated a strong conviction nourished by the basic texts of Israel’s heritage. Consequently, they stood firm for the authentic practice of God’s Torah with a stress on genuine tsedaqa or righteousness as the fundamental principle of social justice. Pastors, who see themselves as God’s servants, should therefore consult anew their own heritage, i.e. the roots of the faith of Jesus of Nazareth and of early Judeo-Christians. Their sympathy with God’s pathos for humanity will make them understand that the main point in religion is ethics, which need to be given priority above worship and dogmatism. It will help them to become effective debaters and strong partners of culture and therefore increasingly relevant public pastors

MgO modifies the activity of Ni/Al2O3 in CO2 methanation

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Measuring human behaviour using head-cave

In this research funded by NSFC (50408038), an agent-based simulation model is developed for the human evacuation behaviour determined by a list of so-called architectural clues in the environment. A research method is introduced with an application for one of these clue types called Doorway. A six-variable model and a related set of virtual scenes were constructed and implemented in a Head-CAVE system, in which 102 subjects were tested as in an evacuation game. With the binary logit regression analysis a utility function is estimated indicating how these variables affect human choice on any pair of doorways in a scene. Evidence was found that the distance from the decision point to the doorway is not always the most important factor as it is assumed in the other evacuation models