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.     

Causal explanations for lack of pregnancy applying the common sense model of illness representation to the fertility context

Abstract

Objectives: The current study explored causal explanations for lack of pregnancy and association with help-seeking behaviour. Differences based on gender and country Human Development Index were examined.

Design: A mixed method design was used.

Main outcome measures: Data were drawn from the International Fertility Decision-Making Study, a cross-sectional study of 10,045 individuals (1690 men; 8355 women) from 79 countries. Respondents rated to what extent they believed their lack of pregnancy was due to something they or their partner had done/not done or other factors and described their reasons for making this rating.

Results: Respondents were aged 18–50 (M?=?31.83) years, partnered and had been trying to achieve a pregnancy/father a child for over six months (M?=?2.8 years). Men and women primarily believed their lack of pregnancy was due to medical problems or chance/bad luck. Thematic analysis of textual responses from 29.7% of the sample found that respondents focused on their personal experience or a salient life event when describing the cause of their lack of pregnancy. Women expressed more regret and helplessness about causes than men. Significant country differences were observed.

Conclusions: Individuals may develop inaccurate causal explanations based on their personal experiences. Access to accurate information is necessary to facilitate timely help-seeking.     

Atheism is only skin deep: Geertz and Markusson rely mistakenly on sociodemographic data as meaningful indicators of underlying cognition

Cognitive scientists of religion and evolutionary theorists alike have been increasingly arguing in recent years that religion is “natural” in the sense of being motivated by core, evolved psychological intuitions. Atheism, and irreligion more generally, appear to pose problems for the naturalness hypothesis, especially considering the significant proportion of people in contemporary societies who reject supernatural beliefs. Although Geertz and Markusson clarify why the naturalness hypothesis does not imply religious determinism, they fail to weigh adequately the more conservative prediction, that of religious probabilism. Furthermore, unlike cognitive scientific accounts favoring the naturalness hypothesis, the authors base their arguments for the cultural scaffolding of atheistic cognition on sociodemographic data aloneda—source that is unlikely to be a meaningful reflection of “natural” underlying cognitive processes     

The relative unnaturalness of atheism: On why Geertz and Markússon are both right and wrong

Commonly scholars in the cognitive science of religion (CSR) have advanced the naturalness of religion thesis. That is, ordinary cognitive resources operating in ordinary human environments typically lead to some kind of belief in supernatural agency and perhaps other religious ideas. Special cultural scaffolding is unnecessary. Supernaturalism falls near a natural anchor point. In contrast, widespread conscious rejection of the supernatural as in atheism appears to require either special cultural conditions that upset ordinary function, cognitive effort, or a good degree of cultural scaffolding to move people away from their maturationally natural anchor‐points. Geertz and Markússon (2009) identify ways to strengthen cognitive approaches to the study of religion and culture, including atheism, but fail to demonstrate that atheism is as natural in a comparable respect as theism     

Religious belief and intelligence: Worldwide evidence

Is there a positive impact of intelligence on religious disbelief after we account for the fact that both average intelligence and religious disbelief tend to be higher in more developed countries? We carry out four beta regression analyses and conclude that the answer is yes. We also compute impact curves that show how the effect of intelligence on atheism changes with average intelligence quotients. The impact is stronger at lower intelligence levels, peaks somewhere between 100 and 110, and then weakens. Bootstrap standard errors for our point estimates and bootstrap confidence intervals are also computed.     

Entering Politics: General Self‐Efficacy and Voting Behavior Among Young People

Political science traditionally conceptualizes efficacy only in relation to politics and government. In this article, we look beyond political efficacy and examine the effect of general self‐efficacy on young adults' voting behavior. General self‐efficacy, an individual's estimation of capacity to operate successfully across a variety of domains, is often important to the behavioral decisions of individuals entering a new domain of activity. With data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, we examine the effect of general self‐efficacy on voting behavior among young, first‐time voters. We find that general self‐efficacy has a positive effect on voter turnout, and this effect is strongest for young people from low socioeconomic‐status families.     

Two Cultures Revisited: New Widening Gaps

Aristotle continues to be a highly cited author in cultural sciences (human and social sciences) and humanities. In the last two decades, his work attracted up to a hundred times more attention than the work of Konrad Lorenz or Edward O. Wilson, who have attempted to synthesize new knowledge on behavior and society and proposed alternatives to traditional, intuitively appealing, explanations. Aristotle's interpretations of the world, which appear to be intuitive to the human mind, were abandoned in natural sciences upon introduction of the experimental method. Human intuition may have been appropriate in conditions under which it was originally selected: for life of small non-anonymous groups of hunters and gatherers in the savannah. Intuition confines human understanding to a simple reality circumscribed by a boundary that can be called Aristotle's barrier. The barrier may only be crossed by experimentation, which is largely missing in cultural sciences. Snow's concept of two cultures may be revisited to characterize a splitting of natural sciences versus cultural sciences. It may also be applied to a widening gulf between science and technoscience. Diverging of the two cultures may have far-reaching consequences for prospects of humankind's survival.     

The Religion of Genetics in Epistemology and Ethics

In the dialog between genetics and religion, the genetics of religion has received thoughtful attention from the possibility of free will to the evolution of human religious behavior. In this article, the author focuses on the reverse, the religion of genetics – specifically, two aspects of how religion shapes our understanding and use of genetics. If religion is (as often argued) whatever our ultimate concern or worldview is, it gives context and direction for the study and application of genetics. Some of the implications are traced through two examples of interaction with one religion, the varied Christian tradition.     

Of pharisees and snark‐hunters: Afro‐Cuban religion as an object of knowledge

Examining some recent publications on Afro‐Cuban religions in the US, this essay argues that some of the evident shortcomings of the literature on this subject may hold important epistemological and methodological lessons for the anthropology of religion in general. These concern the pervasive lack of critical attention to the criteria by which formations of religious knowledge and practice are constituted as objects of study; a failure to acknowledge the historical interaction between theoretical models and public demand structures for authenticated cultural difference; the tendency to treat the relation between observer‐ and insider‐discourses as unproblematic and transparent; and a similarly widespread trend towards over‐systematising and homogenising internally heterogeneous and unbounded aggregates of knowledge and practice. What is suggested instead is an ethnographically informed and actor‐centred sociology of knowledge focussed on mutually articulated universes of meaning, and capable of transcending artificial conceptual boundaries between ‘the religious’ and the sphere of ‘everyday life’.