Discerning the Spirits,Practicing the Faiths: Why Be Lutheran?

Some spiritual wanderers today are “unstuck” in their faith, therefore, they have many faiths; while others are securely “stuck” in their tradition. Getting stuck is desirable, and the path is through spiritual practice. One’s inner life and even perception of reality become transformed through daily habits such as prayer, worship, and discipline. The Lutheran insight that a practicing Christian is simultaneously saint and sinner offers comfort and honest self–understanding.     

An era of webs: Technique,technology and the new cognitive (r)evolution

This paper explores the relationship between technology and technique in the use of computers as tools and how it is leading cognitive sciences into to an era of “webs.” Ernst Kapp suggested that it is humans who determine the “appropriate form” of any tool through the way they use and think about it; Douglas Engelbart, a pioneering computer researcher suggested that tools change to meet our expectations pushing us to understand the world in different ways. These two interrelated observations about technology are especially salient for our burgeoning information age. The current intersection of technologies leads to two competing visions of the computer – both deeply influenced by the concept of human–computer symbiosis – and to very different conceptions of human thinking. The vision of computer as recreation of human thinking, heavily influenced by the development of tools such as the personal computer and object-oriented programming, leads to viewing ideal human thinking as efficiently designed, well organized, and locally regulated by executive functions. The second vision of computers, as augmenting the human mind by extending brain activity out into the information universe, leads to web or trails related themes that focus on non-linear, non-hierarchical inter-linking of information into cohesive patterns. This paper suggests that because of the pace of tool development in these two computer capabilities the theme of the central processing unit dominated early, but we are now entering a new, more complex “age of webs.”     

Religion and cognitive processing of trauma among newly returned US Iraq and Afghanistan veterans

Religion can provide a powerful meaning-making framework that promotes adaptive processing of potentially traumatic events. However, spiritual strain or distress might be associated with maladaptive perceptions of the meaning of possible traumas. These theoretical propositions have yet to be tested in the empirical literature (to our knowledge). This study examined associations between adaptive and maladaptive religious factors – labelled “seeking religious support” and “spiritual distress” and cognitive processing of trauma in a sample of 90 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans recently returned from deployments. Results indicated that seeking religious support was positively, and spiritual distress was negatively, associated with adaptive processing but neither were linked with maladaptive meanings of trauma in the presence of known covariates (posttraumatic stress, depression, combat exposure, and social support). These findings demonstrate that religious/spiritual beliefs and behaviours may affect how trauma is adaptively processed in the months following war-zone deployments.     

THE SPIRIT IN THE NETWORK: MODELS FOR SPIRITUALITY IN A TECHNOLOGICAL CULTURE

Can a technological culture accommodate spiritual experience and spiritual thinking? If so, what kind of spirituality? I explore the relation between technology and spirituality by constructing and discussing several models for spirituality in a technological culture. I show that although gnostic and animistic interpretations and responses to technology are popular challenges to secularization and disenchantment claims, both the Christian tradition and contemporary posthumanist theory provide interesting alternatives to guide our spiritual experiences and thinking in a technological culture. I analyze how creational, network, and cyborg metaphors defy suggestions of (individual) animation or alienation and instead offer different ways of conceptualizing and experiencing communion between the material and the spiritual.     

ANIMAL SUFFERING,EVOLUTION, AND THE ORIGINS OF EVIL: TOWARD A “FREE CREATURES” DEFENSE

Does an affirmation of theistic evolution make the task of theodicy impossible? In this article, I will review a number of ancient and contemporary responses to the problem of evil as it concerns animal suffering and suggest a possible way forward which employs the ancient Jewish insight that evil—as resistance to God's will that results in suffering and alienation from God's purposes—precedes the arrival of human beings and already has a firm foothold in the nonhuman animal world long before humans are ever tempted to go astray. This theological intuition is conferred renewed relevance in light of the empirical reality of evolutionary gradualism and continuity and in view of the recent findings of cognitive ethology. Consequently, I suggest that taking biological evolution seriously entails understanding “moral evil” as a prehuman phenomenon that emerges gradually through the actions and intentions of “free creatures” which—as evolutionary history unfolded—increasingly possessed greater levels of freedom and degrees of moral culpability.     

THE SPIRITUALLY WHOLE-SYSTEM CLASSROOM: A TRANSFORMATIONAL APPLICATION OF SPIRITUALITY

This article presents theory and practical experiences related to classroom pedagogy focusing on spirituality and wholeness—the spiritually whole-system classroom. In it, spiritual principles help create a learning community founded on the experience of wholeness. The spiritually whole-system classroom allows participants the opportunity of “being connected with one's complete self, others, and the entire universe” in order to serve a meaningful, broader purpose. This type of transformation engages heads, hearts, spirits, and hands in the pursuit of a more enlightening experience of human organizing. The article concludes with a critically reflective discussion of spiritual applications to management education and practice.     

CLIMATE CHANGE,LAUDATO SI', CREATION SPIRITUALITY,AND THE NOBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST'S VOCATION

This exploration into spirituality and climate change employs the “four paths” of the creation spirituality tradition. The author recognizes those paths in the rich teachings of Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si' and applies them in considering the nobility of the scientist's vocation. Premodern thinkers often resisted any split between science and religion. The author then lays out the basic archetypes for recognizing the sacredness of creation, namely, the Cosmic Christ (Christianity); the Buddha Nature (Buddhism); the Image of God (Judaism); the “Primordial Man” (Hinduism), as well as the premodern universal teaching of “God as Beauty.” He addresses the subject of evil which deserves serious attention in the face of the realities posed by climate change and the resistance to addressing them. In the concluding section, the author speaks of a new Order of the Sacred Earth that was launched in fall 2017 to gather persons of whatever spiritual tradition or none to devote themselves to preserving Mother Earth.     

Health and Healing: Spiritual, Pharmaceutical, and Mechanical Medicine

Modern medical practice is identified as a relatively recent way of approaching human ill health in the wide scope of how people have addressed sickness throughout history and across a wide range of cultures. The ideological biases of medical or “allopathic” (disease as “other” or “outsider”) practice are identified and grafted onto other perspectives on how people not engaged in modern medicine have achieved healing and health. Alternative forms of healing and health open a consideration of ethnomedicine, many forms of which are unknown and, hence, untested by modern medical research. Ethnomedicine the world over and throughout human history has displayed unique spiritual (vitalism), pharmaceutical (herbs/drugs), and mechanical (manipulation/surgery) approaches to treating illness. The argument is that modern allopathic medicine would do well to consider such “world medicine” as having valuable alternative and complementary therapies, the use of which could enhance contemporary medical advice and practice.     

NEUROMYTHOLOGY: BRAINS AND STORIES

Abstract. I sketch a synthetic integration of several levels of explanation in addressing how myths, narratives, and stories engage human beings, produce their sense of identity and self‐understanding, and shape their intellectual, emotional, and embodied lives. Ultimately it is our engagement with the metanarratives of religious imagination by which we address a set of existentially necessary but ontologically unanswerable metaphysical questions that form the basis of religious belief. I show how a multileveled understanding of evolutionary biology, history, neuroscience, psychology, narrative, and mythology may form a coherent picture of the human spirit. Neuropsychological functions involved in constructing and responding to the narratives by which we form our identities and build meaningful lives include memory, attention, emotional marking, and temporal sequencing. It is the neural substrate, the emotional shaping, and the narrative structuring of higher cognitive function that provide the sine qua non for the construction of meaning, relationship, morality, and purpose that extend beyond our personal boundaries, both spatial and temporal. This includes a neural affect system shaped by our developmental dependency, the dynamic narratives of self formed in the development of identity and reconstructed over the life span, drawing on culturally available mythic and storied forms. Narrative constitutes our movement in moral space and may have the potential both for healing and for disruption for us as individuals and as a species, providing a contingent solution to the alienation and fragmentation of personhood, relationship, and community.     

Implications of modern consciousness research for psychology: Holotropic experiences and their healing and heuristic potential

Abstract

This paper focuses on an important subcategory of non‐ordinary states of consciousness that the author calls “holotropic” ("moving toward wholeness"). In all pre‐industrial cultures, these states have been held in high esteem as vehicles for ritual and spiritual life. They have played a crucial role in shamanism, rites of passage, the ancient mysteries of death and rebirth, Eastern spiritual practices, and the mystical traditions of the world. They have also been widely used for diagnosing and healing various disorders, for cultivation of intuition and extrasensory perception, as a source of artistic inspiration, and for various practical purposes. In the Western industrial civilization, holotropic states have been pathologized and their value denied; the means and contexts for inducing them have been discarded and some of them even outlawed. Modern consciousness research and experiential psychotherapies have rediscovered the healing and transformative potential of these states. They have also revealed their value for obtaining revolutionary insights into the human psyche and the nature of reality. The author suggests that re‐evaluation of the ontological status of holotropic experiences would have revolutionary implications for our understanding of consciousness, of the dimensions of the human psyche, of emotional and psychosomatic disorders, and of spirituality. It would also open radically new perspectives for psychotherapy and self‐exploration.     

Teacher,I had a dream: a glimpse of the spiritual domain of children using project-based learning

Children’s dreams have the potential to awaken feelings, question attitudes and inspire new learning experiences to deepen awareness of spiritual development. Both guidance and spiritual environments created by nurturing educators and parents foster dreams that captivate and motivate children to increase their spiritual self-awareness, leading them to ask open-ended questions about what is real and what is make-believe. This paper offers a discussion of the importance of children’s dreams accompanied by teaching opportunities using project-based learning to channel creative thinking and interconnecting within a child’s culture and community, promoting balance, integrity and reciprocal relationships. Project-based learning has the capability to offer responsive and holistic support of the spiritual domain of children within a caring, welcoming community. Using project-based learning in classrooms shapes the agenda to stimulate wonder, ask inquiring questions and promotes creativity and encourages multiple ways to represent thinking in graphic, written and oral language.     

Spiritual But Not Religious? Beyond Binary Choices in the Study of Religion

“Spirituality” often has been framed in social science research as an alternative to organized “religion,” implicitly or explicitly extending theoretical arguments about the privatization of religion. This article uses in‐depth qualitative data from a religiously diverse U.S. sample to argue that this either/or distinction not only fails to capture the empirical reality of American religion, it does no justice to the complexity of spirituality. An inductive discursive analysis reveals four primary cultural “packages,” or ways in which people construct the meaning of spirituality in conversation: a Theistic Package tying spirituality to personal deities, an Extra‐Theistic Package locating spirituality in various naturalistic forms of transcendence, an Ethical Spirituality focusing on everyday compassion, and a contested Belief and Belonging Spirituality tied to cultural notions of religiosity. Spirituality, then, is neither a diffuse individualized phenomenon nor a single cultural alternative to “religion.” Analysis of the contested evaluations of Belief and Belonging Spirituality allows a window on the “moral boundary work” being done through identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” The empirical boundary between spirituality and religion is far more orous than is the moral and political one.     

Rationality,perception, and the all-seeing eye

Seeing—perception and vision—is implicitly the fundamental building block of the literature on rationality and cognition. Herbert Simon and Daniel Kahneman’s arguments against the omniscience of economic agents—and the concept of bounded rationality—depend critically on a particular view of the nature of perception and vision. We propose that this framework of rationality merely replaces economic omniscience with perceptual omniscience. We show how the cognitive and social sciences feature a pervasive but problematic meta-assumption that is characterized by an “all-seeing eye.” We raise concerns about this assumption and discuss different ways in which the all-seeing eye manifests itself in existing research on (bounded) rationality. We first consider the centrality of vision and perception in Simon’s pioneering work. We then point to Kahneman’s work—particularly his article “Maps of Bounded Rationality”—to illustrate the pervasiveness of an all-seeing view of perception, as manifested in the extensive use of visual examples and illusions. Similar assumptions about perception can be found across a large literature in the cognitive sciences. The central problem is the present emphasis on inverse optics—the objective nature of objects and environments, e.g., size, contrast, and color. This framework ignores the nature of the organism and perceiver. We argue instead that reality is constructed and expressed, and we discuss the species-specificity of perception, as well as perception as a user interface. We draw on vision science as well as the arts to develop an alternative understanding of rationality in the cognitive and social sciences. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our arguments for the rationality and decision-making literature in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, along with suggesting some ways forward.     

The Evolution of Animal Play, Emotions, and Social Morality: On Science, Theology, Spirituality, Personhood, and Love

My essay first takes me into the arena in which science, spirituality, and theology meet. I comment on the enterprise of science and how scientists could well benefit from reciprocal interactions with theologians and religious leaders. Next, I discuss the evolution of social morality and the ways in which various aspects of social play behavior relate to the notion of “behaving fairly.” The contributions of spiritual and religious perspectives are important in our coming to a fuller understanding of the evolution of morality. I go on to discuss animal emotions, the concept of personhood, and how our special relationships with other animals, especially the companions with whom we share our homes, help us to define our place in nature, our humanness. It is when we take the life of another being in the ritual of compassionately euthanizing them (“putting them to sleep”) that who we are in the grand scheme of things comes to the fore. I end with a discussion of the importance of ethological studies, behavioral research in which a serious attempt is made to understand animals in their own worlds, inquiries in which it is asked, “What is it like to be another species?” Species other than nonhuman primates need to be studied. I plead for developing compassionate, heartfelt, and holistic science that allows for interdisciplinary talk about respect, grace, spirituality, religion, love, Earth, and God.     

Towards and Beyond Edinburgh 2010: A Historical Survey of Ecumenical Missiological Developments since 1910

This article provides a brief history of mission theology of the global church since Edinburgh 1910, highlighting the seismological shifts and major developments in missiological thinking and praxis over the years and through various world mission conferences, specifically from the perspective of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME). It argues that, as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the centenary mission conference in Edinburgh in June 2010, mission theology has moved from its early stage of colonial, Eurocentric expressions to post‐colonial and polyphonic articulations of missiology. For the CWME, though, the missiological journey continues even beyond 2010. This article argues that, amongst many important missiological themes that CWME needs to address within the overarching theme of “Ecumenism in Mission”, the themes CWME has identified as its major focus for the coming years – viz. ecclesiology and mission, mission as healing, and mission as contestation – are of crucial pertinence. In the changing global Christian landscape where the centre of gravity of Christianity has moved to the global South, and in a context where new forms of being ecclesial communities are tried out, “The Nature and Mission of the Church” needs to take a “from below” approach, going beyond the traditional frameworks of mainline churches. Mission as healing would provide a comprehensive and more integral perspective to the salvific purpose of God for this world, especially as “healing” is a common strand within many religious, ecclesial and spiritual traditions, offering a dialogical perspective. Mission as contestation is equally significant in today's world where the gospel imperative of confronting satanic forces that express themselves in the form of globalization, neo‐imperialism, patriarchy, racism, casteism and eco‐violence is of cardinal importance.     

Thinking love: Heidegger and Arendt

“Thinking Love: Heidegger and Arendt” explores the problematic nature of romantic love as it developed between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, whom Heidegger later called “the passion of his life.” I suggest that three different ways of understanding love can be found at work in Heidegger and Arendt’s relationship, namely, the perfectionist, the unconditional, and the ontological models of love. Explaining these different ways of thinking romantic love, this paper shows how the distinctive problems of the perfectionist and unconditional models played out in Heidegger and Arendt’s relationship and how that relationship eventually gave rise to the third, ontological understanding of love. This ontological vision of love combines some of the strengths of the perfectionist and unconditional views while avoiding their worst problems, and so emerges as perhaps the most important philosophical lesson about romantic love to be drawn from studying the lifelong love affair between two of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.     

Beyond the Grand Illusion: What Change Blindness Really Teaches Us About Vision

Experiments on scene perception and change blindness suggest that the visual system does not construct detailed internal models of a scene. These experiments therefore call into doubt the traditional view that vision is a process in which detailed representations of the environment must be constructed. The non-existence of such detailed representations, however, does not entail that we do not perceive the detailed environment. The “grand illusion hypothesis” that our visual world is an illusion rests on (1) a problematic “reconstructionist” conception of vision, and (2) a misconception about the character of perceptual experience.     

THE SPIRITUAL LIMITS OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL LIFE

Abstract. How neuropsychology is necessary but insufficient for understanding spirituality is explored. Multileveled spiritual requisites are systematically examined in terms of their neuropsychological constituents and limitations. The central “problem of integrity” is articulated via the “modularity” of our neuropsychology, and evidence is presented for disunities of self and consciousness. It is argued that the integrity of self or spirit is a contingent achievement rather than a necessary given. Integrating possibilities include belief, emotion, and relationships. Understanding integrity, and the transformations of self-surrender and sacrifice, may require explicitly stepping beyond neuropsychology and including the self in a larger system.     

A GOD THAT COULD BE REAL IN THE NEW SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSE

We are living at the dawn of the first truly scientific picture of the universe‐as‐a‐whole, yet people are still dragging along prescientific ideas about God that cannot be true and are even meaningless (e.g., omniscience) in the universe we now know we live in. This makes it impossible to have a coherent big picture of the modern world that includes God. But we don't have to accept an impossible God or else no God. We can have a real God if we redefine God in light of knowledge no one ever had before. The key question is, “Could anything actually exist in the scientific universe that is worthy of the name, God?” My answer is yes: God is an “emergent phenomenon,” as real as the global economy or the government or the worldwide web, which are all emergent phenomena. But God arose from something deeper: the complex interactions of all humanity's aspirations. An emerging God has enormous implications.