QUANTUM PHYSICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND THE IMAGE OF GOD: INSIGHTS FROM WOLFGANG PAULI

Abstract. Nobel Laureate in physics Wolfgang Pauli studied philosophy and the history of ideas intensively, especially in his later years, to form an accurate ontology vis-à-vis quantum theory. Pauli's close contacts with the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung gave him special qualifications for also understanding the basic problems of empirical knowledge. After Pauli's sudden death in 1958, this work was maintained mainly in his posthumously published correspondence, which so far extends only to 1939. Because Pauli's view differs essentially from the direction physics research took after the deaths of the founding fathers of quantum theory, this article attempts to describe the main features in Pauli's revolutionary thought, which is based on nature's "epistemological lesson" as revealed by Pauli's atomic research. Pauli's conclusions have important implications for various issues in Western culture, not least with the limits of science and the relation of science to religion.     

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF WESLEYAN SOTERIOLOGY: THE DYNAMIC OF BOTH INSTANTANEOUS AND GRADUAL CHANGE

In his work Rewired: Exploring Religious Conversion, dealing with Wesleyan soteriology and neuroscience, Paul Markham claims that when one incorporates biology as an epistemic restriction in theologies of conversion, doctrines of instantaneous conversion are invalidated. He asserts that conversion must always be gradual, because the mechanism by which the brain changes in response to experience does not occur instantaneously; rather change is initiated and consolidated over an often lengthy span of time. I argue, however, that doctrines of instantaneous conversion are maintained when taking neuroscience into account. First, for doctrines of conversion that hold to the imputation of Christ's righteousness, neuroscience is irrelevant, because statements of instantaneous change are in terms of a relational status and not biological. Rapid conversion is maintained as a metaphysical position. Second, an embodied and neurologically realized change is expected in theologies of conversion that hold to impartation and, contrary to Markham, immediate change is neurologically possible in a variety of ways.     

INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY AND MYSTICAL UNKNOWING: CONTEMPORARY INSIGHTS FROM MEDIEVAL SOURCES

Intellectual disabilities make people vulnerable to marginalization in churches and social spaces, but theology has not sufficiently attended to the topic and promoted the flourishing of people who have cognitive impairments. This article responds to theology's inadequate attention to intellectual disability and historical resources for reflection on the topic by reading medieval sources with intellectual disability in mind. I argue that Bonaventure's Itinerarium Mentis in Deum provides a model for imagining intellectually disabled and nondisabled people sharing the journey into God and that Eckhart's view of intellect as the uncreated element in the soul includes people who are intellectually disabled among those who may be united with God.     

LETTING A LITTLE NONVERBAL AIR INTO THE ROOM: INSIGHTS FROM ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY PART 2: APPLICATIONS

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) seem to have much in common. For example, they both seek to increase client’s willingness to accept inevitable, unpleasant experience. However, the techniques the therapies use to increase acceptance are often quite different. Building on the philosophical and theoretical framework presented in the previous paper, we discuss the major practical differences between ACT and REBT. We then suggest some concrete ways that the two approaches can be integrated. Such integration may greatly expand the sorts of techniques that a therapist can effectively use in the therapy room. Address correspondence to Joseph Ciarrochi, Department of Psychology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia     

THE PASSIONATE MIND: BRAIN, DREAMS, MEMORY, AND SOCIAL CATEGORIES

Abstract. The intellectualist position held by structuralists does not explain the extremes of emotional reaction to the disruption of social categories. An approach from neuroscience based on the functions of the limbic system in the creation of long-term memory through the role of the hippocampus and REM sleep is proposed to account for the emotive loading of cognitive categories.     

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE APOCALYPTIC IMAGINATION: SCIENCE,FAITH, AND ECOLOGICAL RESPONSIBILITY

The use of apocalyptic and post apocalyptic narratives to interpret the risk of environmental degradation and climate change has been criticized for (1) too often making erroneous predictions on the basis of too little evidence, (2) being ineffective to motivate change, (3) leading to a discounting of present needs in the face of an exaggerated threat of impending catastrophe, and (4) relying on a pre‐modern, Judeo‐Christian mode of constructing reality. Nevertheless, “Apocalypse,” whether understood in its technical sense as “revelation” or in its popular sense as “end of the world as we know it,” remains a powerful way of creatively reimagining the world and of introducing questions of value and significance into discussions of climate change.     

THE ANIMAL BODY MULTIPLE: SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND THE INVENTION OF HALAL STUNNING

This article proposes a specific kind of ontological investigation in the field of science and religion. I argue that science and religion can create distinct practices that enact multiple realities, and thus they should be seen as more than different views of the same world. By analyzing the details of scientific experiments crucial for the invention of halal stunning, I demonstrate that religion and science are both permeable to the social, the biological, and to each other, and that seemingly incommensurable realities can co-occur in the body of an animal. Here, animals’ modes of existence are interdependent with the technologies being used, and with the web of interactions that they are drawn into. In the process of inventing halal stunning, it is not so much about the same animal body that is thought about differently as it is about animals spanning across multiple, physiological, realities as they are recruited into different webs of interactions to create a new slaughter method.     

THE HUMAN BEING SHAPING AND TRANSCENDING ITSELF: WRITTEN LANGUAGE,BRAIN, AND CULTURE

Recent theological anthropology emphasizes a dynamic and integral understanding of the human being, which is also related to Karl Rahner's idea of active self‐transcendence and to the imago Dei doctrine. The recent neuroscientific discovery of the “visual word form area” for reading, regarded in light of the concept of cultural neural reuse, will produce fresh implications for the interrelation of brain biology and human culture. The theological and neuroscientific parts are shown in their mutual connections thus articulating the notion that human beings shape and transcend themselves both at the biological and at the cultural level. This will have relevant implications for the timely topic of human uniqueness in science and theology, and in proposing a new research perspective in which theology may consider culture along with its biological import, but not necessarily in strictly evolutionary terms alone.     

HOMO RELIGIOSUS AND ITS BRAIN: REALITY, IMAGINATION, AND THE FUTURE OF NATURE

Abstract. “Daddy, is God real or is he a part of people's imagination?” The brain constructs reality by bottom-up, genetically programmed mechanisms. Nature selected the human holistic, symbolically thinking, aesthetic brain using a mechanism of brain-language coevolution. Our religious nature and moral capabilities are rooted in this brain, and in the real images it constructs.     

FROM EXTENSION TO REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE IN CLINICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE RADICAL INFLUENCE OF BION AND WINNICOTT

This paper addresses the radical departure of late Bion's and Winnicott's clinical ideas and practices from traditional psychoanalytic work, introducing a revolutionary change in clinical psychoanalysis. The profound significance and implications of their thinking are explored, and in particular Bion's conception of transformation in O and Winnicott's clinical‐technical revision of analytic work, with its emphasis on regression in the treatment of more disturbed patients. The author specifically connects the unknown and unknowable emotional reality‐O with unthinkable breakdown (Winnicott) and catastrophe (Bion). The author suggests that the revolutionary approach introduced by the clinical thinking of late Bion and Winnicott be termed quantum psychoanalysis. She thinks that this approach can coexist with classical psychoanalysis in the same way that classical physics coexists with quantum physics.     

NEUROTHEOLOGY: THE WORKING BRAIN AND THE WORK OF THEOLOGY

Abstract. Because the mind is the significance of the brain and God is the significance of the mind, the concept "mind" bridges how the brain works and traditional patterns of belief. The left mind, which utilizes rational vigilance and the imperative instructions of proclamation, names and analyzes the urgently right. The right mind, which discloses the relational responsiveness of numinous presence and natural symbolism, is immersed in and integrates the ultimately real. Together they provide a typology of mind-states with which to assess regressive, functional, and creative patterns. Hand dominance, gender differences, and cultural bias qualify the use of the metaphor.     

THE LITERAL SENSE OF SCRIPTURE ACCORDING TO HENRI DE LUBAC: INSIGHTS FROM PATRISTIC EXEGESIS OF THE TRANSFIGURATION

This essay explicates Henri de Lubac's account of Scripture's literal sense as illumined by three patristic interpretations of the Transfiguration. Origen's exegesis highlights de Lubac's deployment of the Incarnational analogy in which history contains, veils, and discloses divine mystery. Similar to Jerome, de Lubac distinguishes the realities of biblical history (as revelatory loci) from their textual articulation. Augustine illustrates the hermeneutical influence of the interpreter's presupposed account of history, to which de Lubac, following Blondel, attributes great importance in approaching the biblical letter. De Lubac's account of the literal sense is thoroughly theological and an underexplored resource for thinking about this topic.     

BRAIN SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Abstract. In recent decades of its brief history, brain science has shed light on the source of motives. We review the chemistry and anatomy of the neural core of human motivation; it seems to penetrate the hemispheric cognitive fields asymmetrically, subjecting them to differing evaluations by self-organizing states of mind. The brain core generates and responds to the rhythm and color of emotions, giving moral control to relationships and setting values and meanings in communication. The newborn human mind is ready to share transcendent states with an empathic partner. Fantasy-making play of a child in friendships presages adult rituals. Mystic rites and mythic symbols express feelings essential to time- and space-defying cooperation within the ancestral culture.     

SENSORY EXTINCTION AND SENSORY REINFORCEMENT PRINCIPLES FOR PROGRAMMING MULTIPLE ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR CHANGE

The role of sensory reinforcement was examined in programming multiple treatment gains in self-stimulation and spontaneous play for developmentally disabled children. Two phases were planned. First, we attempted to identify reinforcers maintaining self-stimulation. Sensory Extinction procedures were implemented in which auditory, proprioceptive, or visual sensory consequences of self-stimulatory behavior were systematically removed and reintroduced in a reversal design. When self-stimulation was decreased or eliminated as a result of removing one of these sensory consequences, the functional sensory consequence was designated as a child's preferred sensory reinforcer. In Phase 2, we assessed whether children would play selectively with toys producing the preferred kind of sensory stimulation. The results showed the following. (1) Self-stimulatory behavior was found to be maintained by sensory reinforcement. When the sensory reinforcer was removed, self-stimulation extinguished. (2) The sensory reinforcers identified for self-stimulatory behavior also served as reinforcers for new, appropriate toy play. (3) The multiple treatment gains observed appeared to be relatively durable in the absence of external reinforcers for play or restraints on self-stimulation. These results illustrate one instance in which multiple behavior change may be programmed in a predictable, lawful fashion by using “natural communities of sensory reinforcement.”     

IDENTITY AND THE BRAIN: THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF OUR SELF

This article reviews the neuroscientific understanding of the self and personal identity, focusing on various elements of inclusivity and exclusivity as well as engaging religious and spiritual perspectives. We will also consider how the identity is comprised of biological, social, and ideological or spiritual aspects, and how they are interconnected. We will consider how the brain helps us to construct and maintain our representation of the self and what happens when we have self-transcendent experiences. Such an evaluation will have implications for understanding the intersection between consciousness and the self. This information will be helpful from both the psychological and spiritual perspective for understanding human identity.     

THE HUMAN BRAIN AND HUMAN DESTINY: A PATTERN FOR OLD BRAIN EMPATHY WITH THE EMERGENCE OF MIND

Abstract. The human brain combines empathy and imagination via the old brain which sets our destiny in the evolutionary scheme of things. This new understanding of cognition is an emergent phenomenon—basically an expressive ordering of reality as part of "a single natural system." The holographic and subsymbolic paradigms suggest that we live in a contextual universe, one which we create and yet one in which we are required to adapt. The inadequacy of the new brain—specially the left hemisphere's rational view of destiny—is replaced by a view of a new relatedness in reality in which human destiny comes from and depends upon the mutual interchange between the new brain (cultural knowledge) and the old brain (genetic wisdom) for the survival of what is significant to the whole systemic context in which we live.     

CLIMATE CHANGE IN CONTEXT: STRESS,SHOCK, AND THE CRUCIBLE OF LIVINGKIND

An increasing number of environmentally knowledgeable observers and activists comprehend the situation faced by the emerging global civilization and its unsustainable systems, characterized by planet‐altering positive feedback loops arising from human activity. They perceive contemporary natural and cultural developments as the prelude to the imminent collapse of technological civilization and the cataclysmic end of the Anthropocene epoch via a forced passage through the population bottleneck of the impending extinction‐level event which only a remnant of the present biosphere is likely to survive. Should this understanding be accurate, our own time could become the occasion for the greatest choice ever made on Earth: whether to continue things as they are until humanity becomes the chief cause and the chief victim of the now‐unfolding mass extinction; or to make the necessary transition to the awakening of Planet Earth.