Taking spiritual experiences seriously in the religious education classroom: a transrational approach

ABSTRACT

Spiritual experiences are common across religious and non-religious faiths, but schoolchildren are often afraid to share these because they fear ridicule from peers who are convinced religion is irrational. The need to speak about spirituality in religious education is increasingly recognised. Signposts suggests that intercultural understanding implies recognising religious students’ perception of reality and helping others understand it. Religious education in Norway now includes exploration of existential questions as a core element, and in England, making sense of religious, spiritual and mystical experiences has been suggested as a big idea. In this paper, we discuss how the dualistic paradigm of modern science makes it difficult to take spirituality seriously as lived experience and empirical phenomenon. Instead we suggest a transrational approach to explore our multidimensional reality in an intercultural dialogue where insiders and outsiders learn from each other. We also explore examples of transrational research on spiritual phenomena.     

Reforming Theology,Reframing Science

Abstract : What is the role of science in theology? What internal dynamics compel theology to take science seriously? Those are the questions—posed in a characteristically cautious academic fashion. There is a back‐story that needs to be told, however, if we are to get at these questions with the vigor they require: Without radical reformation of theology, there is little chance that we can even begin to work on the agenda that science poses to Christian faith and life. Faith is a journey in which we seek to make sense of the world and our lives in it in the light of the gospel we have received. The gospel is about God, God's presence and redemptive work in Jesus Christ and God's continuing presence in the Holy Spirit. But since it is God's presence and work in the world and for us, the gospel is also about the world and about human being—and that is where science comes in, provoking its reformation. Science is now an irreplaceable source of knowledge about the world and ourselves, and in some respects its knowledge is normative. Scientific knowledge has reshaped our view of the world and ourselves in ways that are so commonly known that it is unnecessary to elaborate. To relate our gospel to our actual lives in the empirical world—that is theology's motivation for taking science seriously. But theology must be reformed and reshaped if it is to be capable of taking science seriously. In this essay we focus on this reforming of theology.     

Pedagogy as a Framework for a Proper Dialogue between Science and Literature

An aim of science is to find truths about reality. These truths are collected together to form systematic knowledge structures called theories. Theories are intended to create a truthful picture of the reality behind the study. Together with all the other fields of science we get a (complete) scientific picture or a world view. This scientific world view is open in the sense that not all truths are known by scientists and not all present day theories are true. So, there is no reason to assume that any field of science has been or will be completed; science is essentially progressive, or an open ended approach. Science is not the only method of picturing, but the view that science is the best human method for knowledge acquisition is well justified. Knowledge is not all we humans are looking for; we need to make our lives meaningful. The meaningfulness may be achieved through science, art, or practical activity. It is interesting to compare literature and science. Both are expressed linguistically, but the aims of literature and science seem to be very different. We are looking for the theoretical interconnection between science and literature, but the proper dialogue can be found not through science, literature or philosophy, but through pedagogy.     

Psychoanalysis as a creative shaping process2

The author first explains the concepts of creativity, play and aesthetic experience. He then outlines the psychoanalytic process as a creative one that shapes reality. Making a link between psychoanalysis and the humanities, he demonstrates that creative play is a fundamental aspect of the human experience of reality. Aesthetic experiences during the psychoanalytic process are comparable to the play by which children structure their world and artists' activity in following their urge to shape. Furthermore it is shown that creative actualisation testifies to a quasi‐biological need for coherence and structure. Through modern hermeneutics, the truth claims of aesthetic shaping can be established in epistemological terms. The basic principles of hermeneutics‐historicity, linguisticity and communicative experience‐find their psychoanalytic counterparts in memory, representational shaping and transference‐countertransference. Psychoanalysis is demonstrated to be simultaneously a science and an art. On the basis of a case history, aesthetic experience is shown to constitute a specific and unique form of access to psychic reality. Aesthetic experience and creativity do not only aid recovery from ‘bad psychological states’, they are also indispensable for the entire understanding of internal and external reality. It is possible to develop this understanding through a creative psychoanalytic attitude.     

Religion/Technology, Not Theology/Science, as the Defining Dichotomy

Science and religion are incommensurable: one cannot use centimeters to measure volume. Science's proper cognate is theology. Science and theology are human activities that are basically conceptual (partly fallible) frameworks for explaining experience. Religion and technology, by contrast, involve and control or limit human practice and experience : they involve "sensate" reality—people and things. The study of the interaction of these four terms (or any two) must use the terms more precisely.
Science as practiced today has become scientism , another theology. Technology is, without any doubt, the world's most powerful and fastest growing religion.
Minor squabbles among theologies, including science, must continue, but it is the tensions between technology and the established religions that will define this century. Battles on three fronts are already clear: the environment, globalization, and economic gaps. But whole–person healing, the replacement for high–tech reductionist modern medicine, is the most significant, because it will undermine science, which has hitched its wagon to this falling star.
The end of fundamental science is upon us, because it has been so successful. Science will be increasingly applications–driven, and it will be judged by results. Here, it has met its nemesis in wholeperson healing that incorporates integrative medicine. Scientists must now reconsider their role in society. It will not be easy to accept a humbler position. Moreover, the vague allusions to spirituality by scientists need a more authentic commitment to praxis in lifestyle.     

‘A Garland in Place of Ashes’:1Transformative Spirituality and Mission in the Post‐Modern and Secular Contexts

In this paper I aim to explore not what is the so‐called ‘post‐modern and secular context’ but how the church responds to it, which is predominantly to blame it for ‘decline’. Yet it may not be decline, it may be something else altogether. I am reflecting on a western/UK context, but within this are theological assumptions that characterize the wider church. So, having made some remarks on how to approach decline I will then explore some transformations of spirituality and mission that are responses to the post‐modern and secular context. Underlying this is an attitude to ‘spirituality’ which is not about how we worship or our experience of the ‘ethereal’ but is about our ‘capacity for life’. But, I want to maintain that nothing new or transformative can emerge until the church stops resenting and despairing of the context and change we are experiencing. Further, I am not convinced the church in the UK or the West is able to adapt to the strangeness of this new context and will seek always to bring it back under church control. But, I will then offer a post‐modern image for transformative spirituality and mission that could leave its mark on the church.     

Technical filmmaking and scientific narratives: Has science overtaken fiction in recent science fiction? An analysis of Gravity,Interstellar, and The Martian

One can view the recent science fiction films Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian as a three-part dialogue concerning the existential relationship between humanity, technology, and the science employed to create said technologies. Pitched into the deep of space, each film’s protagonist must seek to find technological answers to save their own existence. Each film’s exploration of these themes essentially questions the importance of technology as a product of scientific-calculative thinking and the validity of this thinking as the primary mode of understanding the world. In this article, I explore the existential dialogue crafted between these films through Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Through Benjamin, we will see how the medium of film is completely dependent upon technology to present its art and how this transforms the stories it tells, while also transforming the audience and the audience’s reality. Consequently, understanding the popular reception of these films becomes just as important as the films themselves for our present study. Through Heidegger, we will see how technology provides a space where we can find a truth about ourselves and our reality. However, modern technology’s increasing scientific complexity, created by scientists who in turn employ modern technology to further science, also conceals just as much as it reveals. These films provide us with an opportunity to explore a truth about our dependence upon technology even though, as technologically dependent works of art, they may also conceal how dependent upon science we have become when constructing our reality.     

Recovering enchantment: addiction,spirituality, and Charles Taylor’s malaise of modernity

This article illuminates the nature of ‘spirituality’ as it relates to addiction in modernity. It does so by using philosopher Charles Taylor’s conception of the malaise of modernity and the meta-narrative he presents in A Secular Age as theoretical starting points. It then draws from qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews and ongoing ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Canadian millennials who self-identify as ‘spiritual but not religious’. The young people’s experiences of addiction provide insight into the trappings of free-market capitalist modernity and its inability to provide an overarching source of meaning to their lives. Addiction becomes the means by which these individuals experience the malaise of modernity, which in turn leads them to seek an alternative understanding of the good life—a process they equate with ‘spirituality’. Therefore, an interest in ‘spirituality’ ought to be understood as a personalized attempt to re-enchant what is experienced as a disenchanted world.     

Minding Animals, Minding Earth: Old Brains, New Bottlenecks

Abstract. I emphasize the importance of broadening behavioral, ecological, and conservation science into a more integrative, interdisciplinary, socially responsible, compassionate, spiritual, and holistic endeavor. I stress the significance of studies of animal behavior, especially ethological research concerned with animal emotions in which individuals are named and recognized for their own personalities, for helping us to learn not only about the nonhuman animal beings with whom we share Earth but also about who we are and our place in nature. We are best understood in relationship with others. To this end I develop the notions of “minding animals” and “deep ethology.” Animals are sources of wisdom, a way of knowing. We are all citizens of Earth, members of a global community in which intimate reciprocal and beneficent peaceful relationships are mandatory. A world without cruelty and with boundless compassion, respect, grace, humility, spirituality, and love would be a better world in which to live. We have compelling responsibilities for making Earth a better and more peaceful habitat for all beings. It is essential that we do better than our ancestors. We must reflect and step lightly as we “redecorate” nature. Time is not on our side. I plead for the development of heartfelt and holistic science that allows for joy and play. Science need not be suspicious of things it cannot fully understand. We must not avert our eyes or other senses from the eyes and voices of other beings who urgently need our uncompromising and unconditional aid and love. We can do much more than we have done for animals and the Earth.     

Spirituality in British state education: an alternative perspective

The purpose of this article is to challenge the assumption that a wholly secular spirituality offers an appropriate basis for encouraging spirituality in state schools. It does this by, firstly, drawing attention to the reality of secularist indoctrination in our society and in our schools. This makes the anxiety about religious indoctrination, so strongly expressed at least since the 1960s, heavily one‐sided. The article then outlines an understanding of spirituality which transcends the secular versus religious debate in offering genuinely common ground, open to all and intuitively perceivable by all. Examples are given of a spiritual plane of experience put alongside two radically different planes: the habitual and the demonic. The purpose of explicit education concerning spirituality thus becomes to develop further awareness of this common ground and its presence or absence in practice. The article concludes by advocating that schools enable serious and respectful debate between different interpretations, secular and religious, of this plane of experience, while seeking to exemplify it in the whole ethos of the school.     

The Dialogue between Science and Religion and the Dialogue between People of Different Faiths: Areopagus Revisited

Christianity finds itself in a new situation, one that resembles its first-century experience in that it will be shaped by a new dominant world culture. This culture is marked by three factors-the economy, the multireligious situation, and science. The author's discussion deals with the issues that arise in this engagement with culture under three rubrics: dialogue between science and religion, globalization of the religious encounter, and interreligious dialogue in a globalized world. The major assertions are: (1) Science and religions must avoid restrictive and expansionist relationships and work for reciprocal interaction. (2) Globalization is an unavoidable, but ambiguous, historical development; religions should reject responses of "ethnification" and "primitivism" and rather engage in strategies that encourage both productive encounter and critical distance. (3) Interreligious dialogue includes dialogues of life, of intellectual exchange, of religious experience, of common action, and of confrontation; this dialogue will seek to embrace truth (which involves science) and wisdom (which includes the various religious traditions) in the reciprocal interaction that is marked by love.     

RECONNECTING SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY: TOWARD OVERCOMING A TABOO

Abstract. We argue that reconnecting science and spirituality yields the best rational understanding of the world. Spirituality is seen as the core of many religions. Distinctions are drawn between science and scientism and between spirituality and religion. A historical analysis provides a partial explanation of scientists' aversion to religion. A thought experiment illustrates that spirituality could not only be a legitimate research topic of science but also inform science by offering certain insights. Specifically, science could and should more freely study spirituality in its beneficial impact on individuals' attempts to attain personal wholeness, overcome substance abuse, achieve a more communal society, and safeguard the environment.     

Aliens among us: a representation of children in science fiction

As a literary genre, science fiction has been largely ignored by psychoanalysis. Science fiction lends itself well to analytic interpretations since its structure embraces an attitude of "cognitive estrangement" (a term that defines the genre). Science fiction allows for the exploration of new and different permutations of seemingly ageless conflicts and concerns. One of the conflicts science fiction seems to address revolves about our fears regarding our children. These children become the "aliens" among us, as they seek to usurp parental power and authority. This issue is addressed through a study of two of Ray Bradbury's short stories. By manipulating the reader's experience of the "uncanny," Bradbury succeeds in tapping what appear to be prevalent and potent fears regarding children and, reflexively, the adults who produce them. Mechanisms involved in this play on "alienness" include projective identification of destructive aspects of the self, a resurgence of archaic superego forerunners constituted around primal scene material, and a reawakening of oedipal struggles.     

GOD,VALUE, AND NATURALISM

I consider whether there are philosophical developments which can deepen our understanding of God. I focus upon the relation between experience and physical things and the nature of value. I reject the narrow limits of experience presupposed by the verificationist, and the related monopoly of science on reality. I recommend a conception of reality which is rich enough to accommodate physical things and also the intertwining of value in the natural world. I detect structural similarities between these two problems and the problem of God, and consider how they might be related at the level of content.     

KANT ON RELIGION AND SCIENCE: INDEPENDENCE OR INTEGRATION?

Abstract. Immanuel Kant's theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge tempt conclusion that natural science and religion are two independent discourses of a dualistic system. To be sure, knowledge is anchored in two kinds of causality. Theoretical knowledge is governed by physical causality. Practical knowledge is concerned with the human capacity to initiate a sequence of events that nature could not accomplish on its own—although in conformity with, not independent of, natural causality. Furthermore, the two realms presuppose a common totality of order not of humanity's creation. Without these presuppositions, we could not experience the world as we do, and it would never occur to us to engage in a scientific investigation of the natural world. Hence, we should first exhaust our attempts at explanation on the basis of physical causality before turning to the aid of teleology. The anomalous becomes an occasion to seek a physical law not yet known whereas the miraculous hinders search for a natural law. However, higher than knowledge of “what is” is our capacity to discern “what should be.” This is an inclusive moral capacity that establishes what it means to be human and unites all moral agents in an invisible kingdom of ends that constitutes a moral culture in the physical world uniting religion and science.     

Editorial Notice

Abstract

John McDowell has claimed that the rational link between perceptions and empirical judgements allows us to perceive objects as belonging to a wider reality, one which extends beyond the objects perceived. In this way, we can be said to have a perceptual awareness of the world. I argue that McDowell's account of this perceptual awareness does not succeed. His account as it stands does not have the resources to explain how our perceptions can present objects as belonging to a wider reality, regardless of the judgements we make about that reality. I suggest that we can give a better account of this perceptual awareness of the world by appealing to transcendental phenomenology. A phenomenological study of perceptual experiences describes how they are structured by a sense of the perceived objects as belonging to a world containing other objects of possible perception. I shall outline this sense we have of the world, and argue that it allows us to perceive objects as belonging to a wider reality. Transcendental phenomenology can thus help to explain our perceptual awareness of the world.     

Consciousness and Science: an Advaita-Vedantic Perspective on the Theology – Science Dialogue

In modern science, the synthesis of “nature/mind” in observation, experiment, and explanation, especially in physics and biology increasingly reveal a “non-linear” totality in which subject, object, and situation have become inseparable. This raises the interesting ontological question of the true nature of reality. Western science as seen in its evolution from Socratic Greece has tried to understand the world by “objectifying” it, resulting in dualistic dilemmas. Indian “Science,” as seen in its evolution from the Vedic times (1500—500 BCE) has tried to understand the world by “subjectifying” our consciousness of reality. Within the Hindu tradition, the Advaita-Vedanta school of philosophy offers possibilities for resolving not only the Cartesian dilemma but also a solution to the nature of difference in a non-dualistic totality. We also present the Advaita-Vedanta principle of superimposition as a useful approach to modern physical and social science, which have been increasingly forced to reject the absolute reductionism and dualism of classical differences between subject and object.     

The Philosophical Use and Misuse of Science

Science is our best way of finding out about the natural world, and philosophers who write about that world ought to be sensitive to the claims of our best science. There are obstacles, however, to outsiders using science well. We think philosophers are prone to misuse science: to give undue weight to results that are untested; to highlight favorable and ignore unfavorable data; to give illegitimate weight to the authority of science; to leap from scientific premises to philosophical conclusions without spelling out their relevance; to treat mere resonance between a scientific theory and a philosophical view as empirical evidence for the philosophical view. This article identifies and illustrates some of the ways in which philosophers misuse science, explains why these pitfalls are easy to fall into, and concludes with suggestions for avoiding them.     

The Oneness of Objective Reality and Spiritual Truth

Spirituality and science discover that they are both motivated by the desire to know, and realize that mere sensory perception does not guarantee the truth of knowledge. The concepts that emerge in the new sciences show a striking similarity to the ideas that come to the mind of spiritually intuitive persons, giving rise to the hope that with the recognition that at the bottom objective reality and spiritual truth are one, the historic opposition (or feud) between science and spirituality can at last be overcome.