Calvinist Predestination and the Spirit of Capitalism: The Religious Argument of the Weber Thesis Reexamined

The paper reconsiders the Weber Thesis of a linkage between Calvinism and capitalism. It first restates this sociological Thesis in terms of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination as its theological core and premise in virtue of being treated as the crucial religious factor of the spirit of modern capitalism. Consequently, it proposes that the Weber Thesis’ validity and consistency depends on that doctrine, succeeding or failing as a sociological theory with the latter depending on whether or not it is unique in theological terms, as well as economic-social consequences. For that purpose, it reexamines and compares the Calvinist doctrine of predestination with the pre-Calvinist versions and infers that it is basically identical to or compatible with these. It then draws the implications for the Weber Thesis in respect of the degree of its validity or consistence. It concludes that the Weber Thesis likely is fail as a sociological-economic theory with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination to the extent that the latter is its theological ground and revealed not to be unique and new theologically and probably in terms of its societal effects.     

ISLAM AND BIOETHICS IN THE CONTEXT OF “RELIGION AND SCIENCE”

This paper places “Islam and bioethics” within the framework of “religion and science” discourse. It thus may be seen as a complement to the paper by Henk ten Have ( 2013 ) with which this thematic section in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science opens, which places “Islam and bioethics” in the context of contemporary bioethics. It turns out that in Zygon there have been more submitted articles on Islam and bioethics than on any other Islam‐related topic. This may be a consequence of the global nature of the bioethical issues, driven by advancement in science and technology, which allows for conversation across cultural and religious boundaries even when the normative references and argumentative methods are tradition‐specific.     

“Women Like Me Are Bad at Math”: The Psychological Functions of Negative Self‐Stereotyping

The impact of negative stereotypes can be harmful, and as a result, stigmatized targets are often motivated to deny their accuracy. However, at times, targets of even the most unflattering stereotypes embrace them as valid. Early stigma researchers conceptualized this self‐stereotyping as a form of internalized self‐hatred. However, within the last few decades, stigma researchers have challenged this notion. This more contemporary approach asserts that there are situations where endorsing negative stereotypes can actually be of use to those who are targeted by them. For instance, endorsing negative self‐stereotypes can be used to help justify the status quo, fulfill assimilation and differentiation needs, and protect against personal and social threats. The purpose of the present paper is to review both traditional and contemporary explanations for the causes and consequences of negative self‐stereotyping. In doing so, we highlight strengths and limitations within the self‐stereotyping literature and suggest future directions for research.     

Linking Sexism and Speciesism

Some feminists and animal advocates defend what I call the Linked Oppressions Thesis, according to which the oppression of women and the oppression of animals are linked causally, materially, normatively, and/or conceptually. Alasdair Cochrane offers objections to several versions of the Linked Oppressions Thesis and concludes that the Thesis should be rejected in all its forms. In this paper I defend the Thesis against Cochrane's objections as well as objections leveled by Beth Dixon, and argue that the failure of these objections illuminates the idea of linked oppressions as well as misunderstandings of the Linked Oppressions Thesis, and may provide guidance to philosophers theorizing animal rights from a feminist perspective.     

Multiple Realizability,Constraints, and Identity

Shapiro has suggested that the empirical plausibility of the multiple realizability of human‐like minds is dubious, because a contrary thesis, the Mental Constraint Thesis, enjoys positive empirical evidence. The Mental Constraint Thesis states that, given the actual physical laws, there is only one way to realize a human‐like mind. I will suggest, however, that the Mental Constraint Thesis is not a contrary to the empirical multiple realizability thesis relevant to psychological reduction or autonomy and, as a consequence, has no bearing on those classificatory issues.     

Effects of visual familiarity on “same” and “different” decision processes

An experiment was conducted in which subjects matched upper and lower case versions of well-known abbreviations, such as BBC and etc, and meaningless controls. “Same” RT showed a familiarity effect for upper case versions of abbreviations such as BBC and GPO, but not for the lower case versions bbc and gpo. The converse did not occur for abbreviations such as etc, which were thought to occur most frequently in lower case. The “different” RT was inhibited by familiarity, with pairs such as IBM GPO being classified less rapidly than their lower case versions or controls. These effects occurred for subjects instructed to report “No” for “same” displays and “Yes” for “different” displays as well as for subjects given a conventional decision-report assignment. Some implications of these results for an account of the manner in which familiarity affects graphemic comparison processes are considered.     

“Theology of Presence” in African Christianity: A Transforming Missiological Factor for Women in Contemporary Pentecostal Churches in Africa

Following the independence of many African countries, Christianity has been gaining freedom through indigenizing the church. Christian churches in Africa are self‐indigenizing, self‐innovating, and self‐criticizing their practices and theologies. However, women in African churches remain in an uncomfortable zone. African, biblical, and missionary cultures have been named as sources of discrimination of women in the church. This paper deploys a “theology of presence” to claim that contemporary Pentecostal Christianity (CPC) in Africa, with some continuity in African worldview and biblical cultures, has touched upon and answered women's complex and challenging questions that for a long time have been denied by Christian missionaries. The paper shows how theology of presence, in the “witnessing” and “healing” practised by CPC, has been transforming the missiological factor for women. The paper suggests learning from other models for transformation than policies and gender mainstreaming tools, since these have had little impact. The paper recommends research on hermeneutical reading of the Bible and providing more innovative skills to help women break the silence of being violated.     

DISENCHANTMENT, RE-ENCHANTMENT, AND ENCHANTMENT

Max Weber described the modern world as disenchanted. By contrast, some contemporary writers have said that postmodernism and other developments are re-enchanting the world. I put Weber and these writers alongside each other, and then undercut the discussion by considering a third possibility raised by some recent writers on theological aesthetics: that the world is still enchanted in certain ways. But this third point of view depends on a wide reading of the concept of "sacrament", and one very different from Weber's understanding.     

HUMAN UNIQUENESS,THE OTHER HOMINIDS,AND “ANTHROPOCENTRISM OF THE GAPS” IN THE RELIGION AND SCIENCE DIALOGUE

Abstract. The concept of human uniqueness has long played a central role within key interpretations of the hominid fossil record and within numerous theological understandings of the imago Dei. More recently, the status of humans as evolutionarily unique has come under strong criticism owing to the discovery of certain nonhuman hominids who, as language and culture‐bearing beings, lived as contemporaries with early anatomically modern humans. Nevertheless, many scholars, including those in the field of religion and science, continue to interpret the remains of these other hominids in light of empirically ungrounded implicit assumptions about human uniqueness, which the author calls “anthropocentrism of the gaps.” This paper argues that “anthropocentrism of the gaps” is philosophically unwarranted and thus should not be assumed by scholars in religion and science when evaluating contemporary findings in paleoanthropology.     

Reconsidering the “relative” in relative ingroup prototypicality

Relative ingroup prototypicality (RIP) is an important concept in the ingroup projection model (IPM) of social discrimination and tolerance. This paper reviews measures of RIP currently in use and critically examines how the notion of RIP is captured by statistical tests treating RIP as a single variable. It is concluded that composite measures of RIP imply multiple statistical hypotheses that have previously been confounded. The value of an alternative multiple regression approach is illustrated in a study testing the hypothesis of a negative relationship between RIP and outgroup attitudes. Results based on the conventional univariate analyses would have confirmed or disconfirmed the hypothesis depending on the scoring method. In contrast, the multiple regression approach described in this paper resolves this ambiguity by suggesting that only outgroup prototypicality may be necessary to predict outgroup attitudes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER OF PHILIP HEFNER'S “CREATED CO‐CREATOR”

Philip Hefner's understanding of humans as “created co‐creators” has played a key role in the science and religion field, particularly as scholars consider the implications of emerging technologies for the human future. Hefner articulates his “created co‐creator” framework in the form of scientifically testable hypotheses supporting his core understanding of human nature, adopting the structure of Imre Lakatos's scientific research programme. This article provides a brief exposition of Hefner's model, examines his hypotheses in order to assess their scientific character, and evaluates them against the relevant findings of contemporary science. While Hefner's model is largely commensurate with contemporary science, he at times makes claims that cannot be scientifically falsified or corroborated. Hefner's accomplishments in demonstrating the scientific compatibility of many theological notions is admirable; however, his overall position would be strengthened with a more tacit acknowledgment of the limitations of scientific knowledge. His anthropology draws also from extrascientific commitments and is all the richer for it.     

Embodying Confident Agency: Luther's “Three Estates” as a Resource for Virtue Theory

Martin Luther's social writings (volumes 44–47 in the American edition) provide a robust account of human agency that might help Lutheran social ethics address contemporary crises of confidence. When Luther addresses concrete moral issues, he enriches his two‐kingdoms frame with a focus on particular social roles such as ruler, merchant, soldier, parent, etc. This (often tacit) “three‐estates” approach creates room for a distinctly Lutheran contribution to contemporary virtue theory by focusing on the functions served by particular social roles more than on individual self‐chosen pathways of moral improvement. It also supports a prophetic affirmation of vocation against the contemporary breakdown of expectations and confidence in social roles.     

The Logicality of Language: A new take on Triviality, “Ungrammaticality”, and Logical Form*

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth‐conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the ‘logicality of language’, accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter‐examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often paired with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is ‘blind’ to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non‐classical—indeed quite exotic—kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis‐á‐vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical.     

Climate change,distributive justice,and “pre‐institutional” limits on resource appropriation

In this paper I argue that individuals are, prior to the existence of just institutions requiring that they do so, bound as a matter of global distributive justice to restrict their use, or share the benefits fairly of any use beyond their entitlements, of the Earth's capacity to absorb greenhouse gases (EAC) to within a specified justifiable range. As part of the search for an adequate account of climate morality, I approach the task by revisiting, and drawing inspiration from, two prominent models from classical political philosophy for thinking about norms (rights, permissions, limits, etc.) regarding “pre‐institutional” appropriation of unowned resources; Locke and Kant, respectively. The basic resources they develop—connected to fundamental norms of equality and rights to self‐preservation and freedom—in order to generate their particular schema for distributive shares prior to the existence of just institutions can be usefully and plausibly connected up with the scarce, valuable, rival, non‐excludable, global, and unowned resource that is EAC in order to undergird a picture of individual climate duties in the contemporary world. It is a picture that comes with some fairly radical implications, especially for the well‐off.     

Learning about Spirituality Together with “Seekers”

The present era, often referred to as post‐secular, has in many places seen a resurgence in spirituality. Nevertheless, the contemporary quest for spirituality is unique in the sense that many people do not expect to have their spiritual needs fulfilled within the structures of organized religion, starting on a journey of their own explorations instead. Sociologists of religion, therefore, tend to employ the “dwellers” and “seekers” paradigm to account for this phenomenon. This paper will explore this phenomenon in the context of the Czech Republic, whose citizens are frequently characterized as distrustful toward institutional religiosity, through the lens of the recent World Council of Churches' affirmation on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (TTL). For our purpose, the statement's emphasis on both “transformative spirituality” and “mission from the margins” will be of central importance. Using the notion of transformative spirituality as the energy engendered by the Spirit for the transformation of life and creation, it will be suggested that “seekers” can be agents in God's mission of liberation, reconciliation, and transformation, despite their inability or unwillingness to identify themselves with the church as institution. Keeping in mind ethical considerations, the paper will not seek to make a case for a forced “christening” of the seekers. Rather, it will argue that they can become partners in missio Dei, thus giving the notion of “mission from the margins” a new, contextually relevant dimension.     

AFFECT IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY: DISCUSSION OF ANDRÉ GREEN'S “ON DISCRIMINATING AND NOT DISCRIMINATING BETWEEN AFFECT AND REPRESENTATION”1

André Green's 1999 programmatic essay on affect and representation, an attempt to extend Freud's model of the neuroses (where affect and representation have different vicissitudes) to non‐neurotic cases is submitted to critical reading. Green wishes to restore the importance of representation; to use the second topographical theory, where id, psychical impulse and object‐cathexis replace the unconscious and the ideational representation in order to conceptualise borderline disturbance, and to show how ultimately the ‘non‐discrimination’ affect‐representation obtains in non‐neurotic cases as well. The author, interested in the question posed in Green's essay as to what we have to sell our borderline patients, addresses the various reasons why this project fails. Among the problematic points are the paradox of Green's model of unconscious affect, that does not allow the analyst to generate meaning with borderline patients, the view of ‘representation’ as replacing presence and perception of the object that does not allow the analyst to be a nonabsent object, and the inabilty to conceptualise affect‐representatives and to work out the definition of affect as ‘the anticipation of a meeting with the other's body’ which does not allow the analyst to function as an ‘anticipatory object’ or ‘an object of affect’.     

Teaching World Religions without Teaching “World Religions”

Tomoko Masuzawa and a number of other contemporary scholars have recently problematized the categories of “religion” and “world religions” and, in some cases, called for its abandonment altogether as a discipline of scholarly study. In this collaborative essay, we respond to this critique by highlighting three attempts to teach world religions without teaching “world religions.” That is, we attempt to promote student engagement with the empirical study of a plurality of religious traditions without engaging in the rhetoric of pluralism or the reification of the category “religion.” The first two essays focus on topical courses taught at the undergraduate level in self‐consciously Christian settings: the online course “Women and Religion” at Georgian Court University and the service‐learning course “Interreligious Dialogue and Practice” at St. Michael's College, in the University of Toronto. The final essay discusses the integration of texts and traditions from diverse traditions into the graduate theology curriculum more broadly, in this case at Loyola Marymount University. Such confessional settings can, we suggest, offer particularly suitable – if somewhat counter‐intuitive – contexts for bringing the otherwise covert agendas of the world religions discourse to light and subjecting them to a searching inquiry in the religion classroom.     

Reinventing the algometer: Synopsis of the literature and presentation of a reliable,inexpensive model

This article summarizes the historical development of the algometer in scientific investigations and notes hallmarks in the evolution of the device. The algometer has served as a safe nociceptive stimulus for more than a century. Although the earliest renditions were inexpensive, they were often unreliable and difficult to operate. More modern versions have brought reliability, but at increased expense and complexity. Newer versions have failed to make the device easy enough to use to be practical. The “reinvented” algometer is reliable, less expensive than commercial devices, and easy to build and use. These improvements should allow greater application of the algometer in empirical research and assessment of pain.     

“Go Near and Join Thyself to This Chariot…”: African Pneumatic Movements and Transformational Discipleship

Christian religious innovation has been ongoing in Africa since the early 20th century. It started with indigenous charismatic prophets calling on people to turn over their old deities and submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ. The ministries of these itinerant prophets led to mass conversions culminating in the formation of what became known as the African independent/instituted/initiated churches (AICs). For the best part of the 20th century the AICs defined what counted as Christian in an African indigenous sense. The argument of this article is that the acronym AICs has, since the closing decades of the 20th century, acquired a much broader meaning to include the new Pentecostal/charismatic movements and churches that have burgeoned across the continent. Their trademarks include youthful urban‐centred congregations, media‐driven ministries, and the preaching of a gospel of prosperity. The contributions of both the classical AICs and the contemporary Pentecostals to African Christianity have been phenomenal. As Christian churches, however, we ought to evaluate them not just in terms of numerical or sociological impact, but most especially in terms of transformational discipleship. There is much to celebrate in transformational discipleship as far as the ministries of these African Reformation movements are concerned, but there as yet remain areas of concern that need to be dealt with for the optimization of Christian impact in Africa.