God and Evidence: A Cooperative Approach

This article identifies intellectualism as the view that if we simply think hard enough about our evidence, we get an adequate answer to the question of whether God exists. The article argues against intellectualism, and offers a better alternative involving a kind of volitional evidentialism. If God is redemptive in virtue of seeking divine -human reconciliation, we should expect the evidence for God to be likewise redemptive. In that case, according to the article, the evidence for God would aim to draw the human will toward cooperation with God’s will. Accordingly, the available evidence for God would be volitionally sensitive in that one’s coming to possess it would depend on one’s volitional stance toward its source. The article identifies some implications for divine hiddenness, traditional natural theology, and the view that the evidence for God’s existence is akin to evidence for a scientific hypothesis

Agapeic Theism: Personifying Evidence and Moral Struggle

The epistemology of monotheism offered by philosophers has given inadequate attention to the kind of foundational evidence to be expected of a personal God whose moral character is ’agapeic’, or perfectly loving, toward all other agents. This article counters this deficiency with the basis of a theistic epistemology that accommodates the distinctive moral character of a God worthy of worship. It captures the widely neglected ’agonic’, or struggle-oriented, character of a God who seeks, by way of personal witness and intentional action, to realize and manifest ’agape’ among humans who suffer from selfishness. In doing so, the article identifies the overlooked role of personifying evidence of God in human moral character formation. In agreement with some prominent New Testament themes, the new perspective offered ties the epistemology of monotheism to robust ’agapeic’ morality in a way that makes such epistemology ethically challenging for inquirers about God’s existence. Accordingly,

Reconceiving philosophy of religion

Los filósofos han trabajado durante mucho tiempo con concepciones de Dios, inadecuadas para representar  a un Dios genuinamente digno de adoración. Una deficiencia importante es la omisión de la noción de  severidad divina, apropiada para la idea de un Dios digno de adoración. Como resultado, muchos filósofos  tienen expectativas equivocadas sobre Dios, es decir, expectativas que no concuerdan con lo que serían los  propósitos relevantes para Él, si Dios existiera. Estos últimos propósitos incluyen aquello que Dios busca  lograr cuando revela a los seres humanos (la evidencia de) su realidad y voluntad. Las expectativas  equivocadas de Dios nos pueden llevar a buscar pruebas de su existencia en todos los lugares equivocados.  El antídoto necesario requiere una reconsideración cuidadosa de nuestras expectativas sobre Dios, y nos  capacita para acercarnos a una epistemología de la religión, de una manera que le hace justicia a la idea de  un Dios digno de adoración. El artículo sostiene que la evidencia disponible a los seres humanos de un Dios  digno de adoración, no sería para meros espectadores, sino que buscaría desafiar la voluntad de los seres  humanos para cooperar con la voluntad perfecta de Dios, como sucede en el caso del desafío divino de  Getsemaní.Philosophers have long worked with conceptions of God inadequate to a God genuinely worthy of worship. A  key inadequacy is the omission of a notion of divine severity appropriate to the idea of a God worthy of  worship. As a result, many philosophers have misguided expectations for God, that is, expectations that fail  to match what would be God’s relevant purposes, if God exists. The latter purposes include what God aims to achieve in revealing to humans (the evidence of) God’s reality and will. Misguided expectations for God can  leave one looking for evidence for God in all the wrong places. The needed antidote calls for a careful  reconsideration of our expectations for God, and enables us to approach religious epistemology in a way that does justice to the idea of a God worthy of worship. The article contends that the evidence available to  humans from a God worthy of worship would not be for mere spectators, but instead would seek to  challenge the will of humans to cooperate with God’s perfect will, as in the case of the divine challenge from  Gethsemane

Divine Self-Disclosure in Filial Values: The Problem of Guided Goodness

This article’s main thesis is that divine self-disclosure to humans is best understood in terms of manifested filial values with a distinctive moral intention aimed at cultivating righteousness. To that end, it identifies and clarifies a neglected problem of guided goodness and its significance for God’s self-disclosure in manifested filial values. Part I characterizes the relevant values as the potential motivating powers of some goods to enable filial improvement relative to God’s perfect moral character. Part II explains how God is related to manifested filial values in terms of God’s active and empowering moral character and will. Part III illuminates how God can be experienced by humans through divine self-disclosure in manifested filial values, including in morally searching interventions, such as nudges toward goodness, in conscience. Part IV portrays reciprocity between God’s moral will and human wills as central to human receptivity to divine self-disclosure in manifested filial values. Part V clarifies how evidentially grounded assurance for faith in God can arise from divine self-disclosure when cooperatively received by humans. Part VI contrasts my approach to the ground of faith in God with some views of Martin Buber and H. Richard Niebuhr. Moral phenomenology, aided by the apostle Paul, emerges as central to understanding divine self-disclosure in manifested filial values

Measuring low-stress connectivity in terms of bike-accessible jobs and potential bike-to-work trips: A case study evaluating alternative bike route alignments in northern Delaware

When road segments with high traffic stress are excluded, the remaining network of low-stress roads and trails can be fragmented, lacking connections between many origin-destination pairs or requiring onerous detour. Low-stress connectivity is a measure of the degree to which origins (for this study, homes) and destinations (jobs) can be connected using only low-stress links and without excessive detour. Revision 2.0 to Level of Traffic Stress criteria is introduced and applied to the road and trail network of northern Delaware. A propensity model is proposed to reflect people’s declining willingness to ride a bike with greater trip length and detour, accounting for the impact to health and other benefits of cycling. New connectivity measures are introduced that can be interpreted as the number of bike-accessible jobs and the potential number of bike-to-work trips, powerful measures for evaluating alternatives. These connectivity measures are applied in a case study evaluating alternative alignments for a bike route between Wilmington and Newark, Delaware’s two largest cities, separated by a distance of about 20 km through a largely suburban landscape. The case study explores the benefits of enhancing alternatives with branches that help connect to population and employment centers. We also find that the connectivity gain from constructing multiple alignments is greater than the sum of connectivity gains from individual alignments, indicating that complementarity between the alternatives, which are spaced roughly 5 km apart, overshadows any competition between them

Therapeutic ultrasound as a potential male contraceptive: power, frequency and temperature required to deplete rat testes of meiotic cells and epididymides of sperm determined using a commercially available system

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Studies published in the 1970s by Mostafa S. Fahim and colleagues showed that a short treatment with ultrasound caused the depletion of germ cells and infertility. The goal of the current study was to determine if a commercially available therapeutic ultrasound generator and transducer could be used as the basis for a male contraceptive.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Sprague-Dawley rats were anesthetized and their testes were treated with 1 MHz or 3 MHz ultrasound while varying power, duration and temperature of treatment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that 3 MHz ultrasound delivered with 2.2 Watt per square cm power for fifteen minutes was necessary to deplete spermatocytes and spermatids from the testis and that this treatment significantly reduced epididymal sperm reserves. 3 MHz ultrasound treatment reduced total epididymal sperm count 10-fold lower than the wet-heat control and decreased motile sperm counts 1,000-fold lower than wet-heat alone. The current treatment regimen provided nominally more energy to the treatment chamber than Fahim's originally reported conditions of 1 MHz ultrasound delivered at 1 Watt per square cm for ten minutes. However, the true spatial average intensity, effective radiating area and power output of the transducers used by Fahim were not reported, making a direct comparison impossible. We found that germ cell depletion was most uniform and effective when we rotated the therapeutic transducer to mitigate non-uniformity of the beam field. The lowest sperm count was achieved when the coupling medium (3% saline) was held at 37 degrees C and two consecutive 15-minute treatments of 3 MHz ultrasound at 2.2 Watt per square cm were separated by 2 days.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The non-invasive nature of ultrasound and its efficacy in reducing sperm count make therapeutic ultrasound a promising candidate for a male contraceptive. However, further studies must be conducted to confirm its efficacy in providing a contraceptive effect, to test the result of repeated use, to verify that the contraceptive effect is reversible and to demonstrate that there are no detrimental, long-term effects from using ultrasound as a method of male contraception.</p