Who's Gay? Does It Matter?

ABSTRACT— To answer the question "Who's gay?"—and its logical follow-up, "Does it matter?"—researchers usually define homosexuality with reference to one of three components or expressions of sexual orientation: sexual/romantic attraction or arousal, sexual behavior, and sexual identity. Yet, the three components are imperfectly correlated and inconsistently predictive of each other, resulting in dissimilar conclusions regarding the number and nature of homosexual populations. Depending on which component is assessed, the prevalence rate of homosexuality in the general population ranges from 1 to 21%. When investigators define the homosexual population based on same-sex behavior or identity, they enhance the possibility of finding a biological basis for homosexuality and a compromised mental health (suicidality).     

Does Counseling Need the Mind?

In this article, the author argues that the language used in counseling practice is largely a common sense language using mentalistic words. Basic mentalistic assumptions and challenges to those assumptions are outlined. The practical consequences of retaining or discarding mentalism in counseling are discussed. The author concludes that mentalistic language persists in counseling practice because it offers a useful vocabulary, but that the counseling field could benefit from adopting a path similar to that used in the cognitive sciences.     

The Dialogue Between Religion and Science: Which God?

As exemplified by three cases, difficulties in the dialogue between religion and science not infrequently arise from differing views of God's omnipotence and omniscience. From the side of theology, reflections on the biblical and church-related sources of those views, on Auschwitz and theproblem of theodicy, on God as Creator of the universe, and on how to read and interpret the Bible show that a view of a God who self-limits almightiness and all-knowing in order to grant freedom and functional integrity to a Creation about which God cares can be multiply justified. Such a view is not dissonant with regard to a self-organized, open universe, producing "unexpected" emergent features as seen by science     

Gay male attraction toward muscular men: Does mating context matter?

The purpose of this study was to examine gay men's perceived attractiveness of male figures based on short-term and long-term partner contexts. A sample of 190 gay adult men rated the attractiveness of line-drawings depicting male figures varying systematically in muscularity and body fat percentage in both short-term and long-term dating contexts. Mixed effects modeling was used to estimate the effects of figure (muscularity and body fat), dating context (short-term vs. long-term), and individual rater characteristics on attractiveness ratings. Results indicated that figure muscularity and body-fat had significant non-linear (i.e., quadratic) relationships with attractiveness ratings, and short-term dating context was associated with more discriminating ratings of attractiveness. Interactions between individual characteristics and figure characteristics indicated that the more available the individual and lower body fat, the more discriminating they were in ratings of attractiveness. The implications for future investigations considering both object and observer characteristics of attractiveness preferences are discussed.     

The old and the new sublimes: Do they signify? God?

Conclusion It is not the case that God is interestingly like the unavailable transcendental signified in being unavailable. God always was absconded. The signified may not even really have gone away at all. And if it has, it is not God; it is only like Him in having gone away. And it has gone away, if it has, in a different mode of ‘going away’. To use a Turneresque metaphor: God is and will always be another, far, range behind the misty-but-glittering and absconded signifieds, which leave only the trace which is the play of signifiers in the immediate foreground. One is free to attend to whichever range one wishes, or one may attend only to the foreground. But the dazzlingsublime ¹² of the foreground, “That change of cloud and light, never-ending and agitating itself into kaleidoscopic patterns, the play of signifiers”, is—and never could be—quite like the “sublime” of the far, far range whose Inhabitant is said to be, “From everlasting to everlasting”. His “play” is said to be not of signifiers, butof all there is; it is notsemiological butontological. And He is altogether beyond the sublime, for with Him, or with the Beatific Vision of Her,there would be no critical problem left. The Logos is not a signifier. —shakes a dust Of the doctrine, flavours thence, he well knows how, The narrative of the novel,—half believes All for the book's sake… Robert Browning     

What Does it Mean to call God Good?

Contemporary expositions of God's goodness commonly err either (1) by subjecting God to moral laws, which is to question His sovereignty, or (2) by failing to establish that God will always act in accordance with moral principles, which removes the theist's ability to appeal to God's goodness in response to problems of evil. Current attempts at intermediate positions which avoid these two problems fall short. In this paper, I aim to construct a better intermediate position and account of God's goodness. I do this by claiming that God's ability to create is best explained in terms of God's self-love. Since God, as the greatest possible being, must be able to create, He must love Himself. I argue that this in turn entails that God loves all things, since by loving Himself, God loves the pre-existent ideas of everything that will come to exist, and by extension the things themselves. This, I argue, allows us to have confidence that God will act in accordance with moral principles, but without subjecting Him to moral laws.     

How Does the Body Get Into the Mind?

In this article, we propose that gestures play an important role in the connection between sensorimotor experience and language. Gestures may be the link between bodily experience and verbal expression that advocates of embodied cognition have postulated. In a developmental sequence of communicative action, gestures, which are initially similar to action sequences, substantially shorten and represent actions in metonymic form. In another process, action sequences are based on kinesthetic schemata that themselves find their metaphoric expression in language. Again, gestures enact kinesthetic schemata that are correlated with verbal expressions. Examples from a large database are used to illustrate the various processes by means of which language arises when students conduct school science investigations.     

Gender Ideology and Religion: Does a Masculine Image of God Matter?

A number of recent studies explore predictors of gender ideology due to its consistent influence on a range of outcomes. Another growing body of research investigates the effects of images of God on an assortment of attitudes. This study unites these two strands of research to provide an account of the association between religious belief and gender ideology. Using data from a national random survey and multivariate analysis, I examine whether a masculine image of God is significantly associated with a more conservative gender ideology. The results demonstrate that viewing God as a “he” is robustly associated with a more traditional gender ideology.     

Depressive Symptoms and Tobacco Use: Does Religious Orientation Play a Protective Role?

Many studies have established an association between depression and smoking. The main objective of this study was to determine whether religious orientation moderates the relationship between depressive symptoms and tobacco use. This study utilized a cross-sectional data collection strategy to examine the relationship among depressive symptoms, religious orientation, and tobacco use among undergraduate students (N = 349) at a midsize southeastern university. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, the Extrinsic/Intrinsic Religious Orientation Scale-Revised and the Drinking and Drug Habits Questionnaire. Analyses using hierarchical linear regression indicate a significant interaction effect (depressive symptoms × extrinsic religious orientation) on tobacco use. Additional moderation analyses reveal a significant interaction effect between depressive symptoms and the extrinsic-personal religious orientation on tobacco use. Results suggest that having an extrinsic religious orientation, and specifically, the extrinsic-personal subtype, can protect against the effects of depressive symptoms. In this regard, individuals who turn to religion for solace or comfort may be less likely to engage in tobacco use when experiencing depressive symptoms. Limitations, future directions, and implications are discussed.     

Cognitive Spread: Under What Conditions Does the Mind Extend Beyond the Body?

The extended mind hypothesis (EMH) is the claim that the mind can and does extend beyond the human body. Adams and Aizawa (A&A) contend that arguments for EMH commit a ‘coupling constitution fallacy’. We deny that the master argument for EMH commits such a fallacy. But we think that there is an important question lurking behind A&A's allegation: under what conditions is cognition spread across a tightly coupled system? Building on some suggestions from Haugeland, we contend that the system must exhibit a distinctive sort of semantic activity, semantic activity that the system as a whole takes responsibility for.     

The Association of Daily Hassles and Uplifts with Family and Life Satisfaction: Does Cultural Orientation make a Difference?

The study examined similarities and differences between people having individualist and collectivist cultural orientations in terms of what they perceive as stressful and uplifting experiences in their daily lives, and the relation between daily experiences and family and life satisfaction. Data were collected from two representative community samples (697 Jews and 303 Arabs). Each sample was grouped into individualist and collectivist cultural orientations. The two cultural orientation groups differed with respect to the appraisal of positive and negative daily experiences. A structural equation modeling (SEM) multi-group analysis indicated a similar factor structure for hassles and uplifts in both groups. However, the two groups differed in the effects of positive and negative daily occurrences on family and life satisfaction.     

Dispositional Optimism in Chinese People: What Does the Life Orientation Test Measure?

The Life Orientation Test was back-translated to Chinese and administered to a sample of college students (N = 314) and a sample of normal adults (N = 306) along with measures of personality and symptoms. When subject to factor analysis, the positive items (representing optimism) and the negative items (representing pessimism) emerged as two separate factors. Empirically, optimism and pessimism were moderately correlated and had unique contributions to the explanation of personality and symptom measures, so that the total score of C-LOT was a better predictor of criterion measures than either optimism or pessimism alone. However, C-LOT's relationship with symptoms was eliminated after negative affectivity was controlled in the student sample, but not in the adult sample, thus suggesting some confounding with negative affectivity. Further research is required to improve the measurement of optimism in Chinese people and to clarify the relationship between optimism and pessimism.     

The Effect of Self‐Identified Sexual Orientation on Helping Behavior in a British Sample: Are Lesbians and Gay Men Treated Differently?

In a British sample, the wrong-number technique was used to examine levels of helping behavior shown toward lesbians and gay men. A wrong-number telephone call, from either a man who self-identified as gay or heterosexual, or a woman who self-identified as either lesbian or heterosexual, was made to 232 men and women. The caller requested help by asking the respondent to relay a message to his or her partner by telephone. As predicted, lesbians and gay men were less likely to be given help than were their same-gender heterosexual counterparts. However, lesbians were given a similar amount of help as were heterosexual men. Male participants were less likely to give help to gay men than to lesbians, but female participants were no less likely to help lesbians than gay men. The results suggest that, although lesbians and gay men meet discrimination in everyday life, the level of discrimination may differ.     

Cosmic Mind?

This article explores the remote scientific possibility of something like “cosmic mind” or “cosmic minds.” Descartes proposed his famous dualism, res cogitans (mental reality) plus res extensa (physical reality). With Isaac Newton and classical physics, res extensa won in Western science and with it, we lost our minds; we lost our subjective pole. Quantum mechanics has seemed to many, since its formulation in the Schrödinger equation in 1926, to hint beyond physics to a role for the human conscious observer in quantum measurement. At least two interpretations of quantum mechanics, or its extension—the latter by Penrose and Hameroff, and the former by myself—suggest a new panpsychism where conscious awareness and possibly free will occur at quantum measurements anywhere in the universe. If so, then we live in a vastly participatory universe. More: entangled quantum variables may conceivably share some form of consciousness and free will, whether embodied in us, or living forms elsewhere in the universe, or disembodied; hence, something like cosmic mind or minds are not ruled out. If true, life anywhere in the universe will have evolved with mind and free will. Souls are not impossible.     

The immoral gene: Does it really exist?

Over the last years several European patents were opposed for protecting technology violating the morality requirement under Article 53(a) EPC. Attempts have been made by the Appeal Boards of the European Patent Office (EPO), as well as by amendments introduced into the Implementing Regulations of the European Patent Convention (EPC), to address this sensitive patentability requirement more precisely. The most recent hot topic coming up in this context is the patentability of stem cells. It is to be expected that this discussion will still go on in the field of biotechnological inventions for the next several years. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “The Ethics of Intellectual Property Rights and Patents,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 23–24 April, 2004.     

Does God Cheat at Dice? Divine Action and Quantum Possibilities

The recent debates concerning divine action in the context of quantum mechanics are examined with particular reference to the work of William Pollard, Robert J. Russell, Thomas Tracy, Nancey Murphy, and Keith Ward. The concept of a quantum mechanical "event" is elucidated and shown to be at the center of this debate. An attempt is made to clarify the claims made by the protagonists of quantum mechanical divine action by considering the measurement process of quantum mechanics in detail. Four possibilities for divine influence on quantum mechanics are identified and the theological and scientific implications of each discussed. The conclusion reached is that quantum mechanics is not easily reconciled with the doctrine of divine action.     

Does God Know What It is Like to be Me?

Does God knows what it is like to be me? Scripture and religious tradition seem quite clear that God knows everything about us, even the deepest secrets of our hearts. There is nothing hidden from him. And this is an answer backed up by a more philosophical theology; for among the traditional list of divine attributes is omniscience: knowing everything that there is to know. The idea, moreover, seems essential to the ordinary religious consciousness, for how can God really help us, or fairly judge us, unless he knows exactly what things are like for us?     

A Cross-cultural Perspective on Judgments of Woman-to-woman Sexual Harassment: Does Sexual Orientation Matter?

We investigated perceptions between Brazilian and U.S. college students regarding a hypothetical case involving woman-to-woman sexual harassment in which the sexual orientation of both the target and the alleged harasser was experimentally manipulated. Thus, there were four different scenarios, which were randomly given to 952 college students (89% of whom reported to be White). We found that the scenario that depicted heterosexual woman-to-heterosexual woman sexual harassment was rated as the least likely to be sexual harassment, to need an investigation, and to be punishable than the other scenarios. Generally, Brazilians viewed the case as more likely to be sexual harassment and to need an investigation than did U.S. respondents. In the U.S., women perceived the case as more likely to be sexual harassment, to need an investigation, and to be punishable than men did; however, no such gender differences were found in Brazil. Lastly, hostile sexism and perceptions of woman-to-woman sexual harassment predicted respondents rating the case as sexual harassment and in need of an investigation.