ALTRUISM IN NATURE AS MANIFESTATION OF DIVINE ENERGEIA

Abstract. Christian theological attempts to integrate scientific claims about altruism in nature have not been completely successful largely because Western theologies—particularly some Protestant versions—lack a theologically grounded ontological basis for speech about altruism, agape, and other forms of love. Patristic theologies of divine essence, energeia and logoi, most fully developed in Eastern Orthodox thought, provide just such an ontological basis upon which Christian thought can stand in order to demonstrate that altruism in nature does not challenge religious claims that moral behavior has transcendent meaning but rather suggests that it is itself a manifestation of the divine will.     

Humour's role in the relation between attributional style and dysphoria

The present study empirically investigated the role of adaptive and maladaptive components of humour in the relation between attributional style and dysphoria. Four hundred eighteen students (134 male, 282 female; 2 respondents did not indicate gender) completed questionnaires measuring attributional style, humour styles and depressive symptoms. Among men and women, higher levels of affiliative and self‐enhancing humour, and lower levels of self‐defeating humour, were each associated with fewer depressive symptoms. Additionally, higher levels of affiliative humour provided a buffer against the deleterious effects of a negative attributional style in men, but not women. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Race,gender, and the response to stress: Autoworkers' vulnerability to long-term unemployment

A three-wave panel study of auto plant closings focused on the mental health effects of unemployment on blue-collar workers. This paper explores how the impact of long-term unemployment varies across race and gender. We also examine whether other demographic factors can themselves modify the impactsof race and gender. Dependent variables include two measures of distress and two drinking measures. Results showed that the effect of long-term unemployment on distress and drinking was more severe among less educated workers, and responses of blacks were especially sensitive to level of education. In addition, men showed a greater association of long-term unemployment with depression (and to some extent anxiety) than did women. Marriage affected the responses of men but not of women, and of whites but not of blacks. Explanatory variables—the worker's experiences of financial hardship, other negative life events, and lack of a confidant—largely accounted for male-female differences. We conclude by discussing theoretical implications of these effects and address the limitations of the traditional term “vulnerability” in describing them. A prior version of this paper was presented at the North Central Sociological Association meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, April 25, 1991. Funds for the research were provided by the Michigan Health Care Research and Education Foundation and by the International Union-UAW. We are especially grateful to the men and women of the UAW, whose experiences and views form this investigation. We thank Kiseon Chung, Scott McKearney, David Rauma, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts.     

DIVINE ACTION: IS IT CREDIBLE?

Abstract. The concept of God's acting in the world has been seen to be problematic in light of the claims of scientific knowledge that the regularity of a law like universe rules out divine action. There are resources in both scientific knowledge and religion that can render meaningful and credible divine action. The new physics, chaos theory, cognitive psychology, and the concept of top-down causation are used to understand how God acts in the world. God's action is not an intervention, but is understood on the model of how the mind influences the brain in a downward causative manner. Suggestions for imagining God's actions are discussed.     

Police interviewing: The identification of vulnerabilities

Failure to identify potential psychological vulnerabilities of people entering the Criminal Justice System continues to present a serious problem for the police and other agencies. This paper reviews some of the problems involved which include: the nature of the handicap itself, current guidelines and definitions, and somewhat arbitrary legal interpretations by the courts. An experiment is described in which police officers chose not to identify someone as vulnerable or ‘at risk’, despite information in all conditions having been biased towards eliciting a positive judgement.     

On the Argument for Divine Timelessness from the Incompleteness of Temporal Life

A promising argument for divine timelessness is that temporal life is possessed only moment by moment, which is incompatible with the existence of a perfect being.
Since the argument is based on the experience of time's passage, it cannot be circumvented by appeal to a tenseless theory of time.
Neither can the argument be subverted by appeals to a temporal deity's possession of a specious present of infinite duration.
Nonetheless, because the argument concerns one's experience of time's passage rather than the objective reality of temporal becoming itself, it is considerably weakened by the fact that an omniscient being possessing perfect memory and foreknowledge, need not find such experience to be an imperfection.     

GOD IN THE CAVE

When Finite and Infinite Goods was published in 1999, it took its place as one of the few major statements of a broadly Augustinian ethical philosophy of the past century. By “broadly Augustinian” I refer to the disposition to combine a Platonic emphasis on a transcendent source of value with a traditionally theistic emphasis on the value‐creating capacities of absolute will. In the form that this disposition takes with Robert Merrihew Adams, it is the resemblance between divine and a finite excellence that makes the finite excellence objectively of value, and it is the correspondence of an obligation to a divine command that makes the obligation objectively obligatory. I look closely at the complexity of this ethical division of labor—between the good and the right—mainly as it appears in the context of Finite and Infinite Goods, but also with attention to the broader corpus of Adams's writings, particularly his work on Leibniz and the essays of his that have been gathered together in The Virtue of Faith. I argue that there is a creative tension in his work between his desire to secure an objective basis for ethics and his affirmation of the value of grace, a love that is not proportioned to the excellence of its object. This tension, I further argue, ought to be resolved in the direction of grace.     

THE CONCEPT OF CONTINUOUS CREATION PART I: HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY USE

The concept of continuous creation is now widely used in the context of reflections on the dialogue between science and religion. The first part of this research work seeks to understand its meaning through a twofold elaboration: (1) the historical setting of the three philosophical trends in which this concept was developed: scholastic (conservation), Cartesian (conservation through repetition of the creative act at each instant), and dynamic (interpreting the emergence of radical and contingent novelty in nature as a sign of the continuity of creation); (2) a philosophical and theological critique of the concept of continuous creation regarding the question of the relationship between change and creation, in the light of its highly polymorphous contemporary use, and, in opposition, its absence within the Catholic Magisterium. This work opens the field a further step toward reflection on a renewed concept of continuous creation.     

Association between cognitive vulnerability to depression - dysfunctional attitudes and glycaemic control among in-patients with type 2 diabetes in a hospital in Beijing: a multivariate regression analysis

This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the relationship between glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and cognitive vulnerability to depression (dysfunctional attitudes) in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. A total of 245 valid records from June 2016 to December 2016 were collected from a hospital in Beijing. Participants were asked to complete four questionnaires (Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale, Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire, Zung Self-rating Depression Scale, and World Health Organization Quality of Life Instrument-Short Form) to assess mental health and quality of life. Multivariate regression analysis was conducted to determine the correlations between HbA1c, mental health, quality of life and other clinical variables. The results showed that dysfunctional attitudes were associated with HbA1c, with a standardized regression coefficient (β) of .13 (p = .01), although 1 h C-peptide (β = ?.75, p < .0001) was the most significant predictor of HbA1c in the regression model. The results indicated that dysfunctional attitudes, as a cognitive vulnerability to depression, were a relevant factor in HbA1c, although further studies are needed to establish the nature of the connection between dysfunctional attitudes and glycaemic control in diabetes patients.     

The Solubility of Salt: A Divine Action Account

In the burgeoning literature on dispositions, solubility is a standard example. In this paper we give a rigorous theistic divine action account of the simple mechanism of the dissolving of salt, NaCl, into the ions Na⁺ and Cl^?. We explore this reaction in terms of an alternative view of divine action, Divine Compositionalism, which holds that the functioning of every physical, chemical, and biological mechanism in the universe is a manifesting complex disposition, which is nothing other than ways God acts according to plan.