Apologist From The World of Science: John Polkinghorne Frs

1990 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Avis

JohnPolkinghorne FRS (b.1930), the Cambridge Professor of Mathematical Physics turned Anglican parson enjoys unrivalled opportunities as an apologist for the Christian faith to those with a general scientific education. Without reading a word of his writings, many Christians will be encouraged to know that a distinguished professional scientist is so firmly persuaded of the truth of the Christian faith as to resign a prestigious professional position and embrace the far from prestigious calling of a Christian minister in the secular environment of today. Some who embark on his books may not understand all the scientific allusions, but they will be impressed by his testimony that orthodox Christian belief can exist in harmony with the scientific worldview and vocation.

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-291
Author(s):  
Predrag Milosevic

There are many models in the entire history of architecture which have travelled across the world, from one to another part of the big world. For various reasons, very frequently not at all scientific or professional, in our part of the world, be it Serbian or Yugoslav, or south Slav, some like to remain silent, when it comes to the transition of a Byzantine model, which by nature is rooted in the Orthodox Christian faith at the south east of Europe and the outmost west of Asia, to their areas, pervaded to a great extent by the Roman Catholic Christian belief, or Islam. There are numerous evidences of the transition of a model, one of many which found their new home on the west-European soil after the fall of Byzantium, mostly after the Crusades, when looters, but also scientists and artists in Italy, came by new wealth, and new knowledge, in the capital of the fallen Empire, observing its magnificent edifices, and taking its parts to their boats and shipping them to Venice and other cities in Italy and placing them on their buildings and squares, as they have done with the columns of the Augusteion of Constantinople, the square dedicated to Justinian's mother Augusta, which now decorate the square near the famous Venetian church of Saint Marco. Some other, also numerous accounts, explain how the Ottoman Turkish architecture in almost the same way, adopted its mosque construction model at the same place, in the same manner, retaining the actual structures but changing the religious insignia, or by copying this Byzantine model in building the new mosques.


Author(s):  
Колесник Марина Олександрівна

The article tackles the issue of construing the educational content from the standpoint of interdisciplinary causative-systemic approach and previously introduced pattern of shaping pedagogical universities' students' universal scientific worldview (USW). The paper discusses theoretical premises of forming future natural sciences' teachers' integral image of Nature. The suggested approach advocates the integration of data from diverse fields of science in the process of modeling educational content, discusses the notion of the "image of the world" and allocates it in the structure of natural- scientific education. Construing respective academic courses' content encompasses the focal idea of natural causality. The article presents the results of the suggested USW model's analysis and dwells on the results of implementing an experimental course into a curriculum. The paper highlights the said model's axiological potential.


Author(s):  
Samuel Lebens

Hassidic idealism is the view that the world and everything in it (even you and I) exist only in the mind of God. To be is to be part of God’s dream, or the story that God is telling. This chapter argues that Hassidic idealism, coupled with an understanding of the philosophy and semantics of fiction, allows us to generate a distinctive solution to ‘the problem with sefirot.’ The sefirot are the attributes of God, as the Kabbalistic tradition understands them. The problem with the sefirot is that, as they are classically understood, belief in them seems to collapse into polytheism. The problem is analogous to certain problems facing the Christian belief in the Trinity. This chapter proposes an original Hassidic solution to this problem that relies upon various insights about fictions within fictions, and fictions that include their authors as a character.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan Gao ◽  
Junxi Qian ◽  
Zhenjie Yuan

This article provides a multi-scaled, grounded understanding of how secularization and re-sacralization occur simultaneously in a context of rapid modernization. Recent geographical scholarship in the geography of religion have exhibited deficient reflection over the geo-historical contingencies and complexities of secularization and secularity. This article seeks to re-conceptualize secularization as a multi-scaled, grounded and self-reflective process through an empirical study of the hybrid, contradictory processes of secularization and postsecular religious revival in a ‘gospel village’ in Shenzhen, China. In this rapidly urbanizing village, Christian belief inherited from Western missionary work has gradually lost its hold amidst modernization and urbanization. However, the inflow of rural migrant workers has re-invigorated the church. Christianity has created possibilities for postsecular ethics and resistances, enabling migrant workers to materially, symbolically and emotionally settle in a new socio-economic environment. Also, new situated religiosities arise as theological interpretations are used to negotiate and even legitimize social inequalities and alienation. This article therefore argues that the postsecular turn in human geography needs to consider how the postsecular articulates, and co-evolves with, secular conditions of being in the world. It highlights the hybrid and contested nature of the secularization process, which gives rise not only to disengaged belief and immanent consciousness but also to new aspirations for, and formations of, religiosities.


Author(s):  
Andrew N.W Hone

Starting with the numbers 1,2,7,42,429,7436, what is the next term in the sequence? This question arose in the area of mathematics called algebraic combinatorics, which deals with the precise counting of sets of objects, but it goes back to Lewis Carroll's work on determinants. The resolution of the problem was only achieved at the end of the last century, and with two completely different approaches: the first involved extensive verification by computer algebra and a huge posse of referees, while the second relied on an unexpected connection with the theory of ‘square ice’ in statistical physics. This paper, aimed at a general scientific audience, explains the background to this problem and how subsequent developments are leading to a fruitful interplay between algebraic combinatorics, mathematical physics and number theory.


2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (115) ◽  
pp. 345
Author(s):  
Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer

Diante do panorama extremamente complexo do campo religioso hoje o documento de Aparecida declara estar o ser humano do século XXI em meio a uma “mudança de época”. Ao lado do processo de secularização, que leva o ser humano a não temer declarar sua ausência de crença em Deus e sua não pertença a qualquer sistema religioso, está igualmente o revival” religioso anárquico e selvagem que fez eclodir seitas e novas propostas “espirituais” dos mais variados perfis, questionando em profundidade a decantada supremacia do monoteísmo cristão no Ocidente. A proposta neste artigo é, depois de uma breve análise da situação da religião no mundo e especialmente no Brasil hoje, refletir sobre a diferença entre fé e religião e como esta reflexão, tomada em sua radicalidade, leva a uma compreensão renovada do que seja a fé cristã e sua identidade no mundo atual. Para chegar a isto, são analisados três elementos constitutivos da fé cristã: a historicidade, a experiência e o testemunho, no desejo de traçar um perfil aproximado de uma tendência importante na teologia cristã hoje, que prefere definir o Cristianismo mais como uma revelação do que como uma religião.ABSTRACT: Before the extremely complex panorama of the religious field today the document of Aparecida declares the human being of the XXI century to be in the mist of an “epoch change”. On the side of the secularização process, that leads the human being not to fear in declaring his lack of belief in God and his not belonging to any religious system, there is also the religious anarchical and wild “revival” that brought out sects and new “spiritual” proposals of the most varied profiles, questioning in depth the decanted supremacy of Christian monotheism in the Occident. The proposal of this article is, after a brief analysis of the situation of religion in the world and especially in Brazil today, to reflect on the difference between faith and religion and how this reflection, taken in its radicality, leads to a renewed understanding of what Christian faith is and its identity in the current world. To arrive at this, three constituent elements of the Christian faith are analyzed: the historicity, the experience and the witness, in the desire to trace a profile that approaches an important trend in the Christian theology, which prefers to define Christianity more as a revelation than as a religion.


Author(s):  
Guy G. Stroumsa

Despite the early loss of his Christian faith, Renan held onto a lifelong belief in the incommensurability of Christianity with Judaism and Islam. This entailed his perception of an unbridgeable chasm between Christianity and the two “Semitic religions.” Such insistence originated in his understanding of Jesus as a unique figure, one who stood at the very core of the world history of religions. It is in his Life of Jesus that he expressed most clearly his views on the founder of Christianity. First published in 1863, Renan’s Vie de Jésus would swiftly become, in the original as well as in its multiple translations, a nineteenth-century international best seller. The chapter reassess the roots of Renan’s project, as well as its impact. Finally, we compare Renan and the Jewish historian Joseph Salvador on the figure of Jesus.


2018 ◽  
pp. 11-22
Author(s):  
Pekka Sulkunen ◽  
Thomas F. Babor ◽  
Jenny Cisneros Örnberg ◽  
Michael Egerer ◽  
Matilda Hellman ◽  
...  

From its ancient origins in small-scale gaming sites in local communities, gambling in the 21st century has become a global industry and an increasingly standardized pastime across the world. The growth started in the early the 20th century, and accelerated in the past few decades. The history of gambling is a history of regulation. Gambling has always been controlled by political powers and still is in both democratic and non-democratic countries. Islamic and communist regimes have been most negative for moral reasons. Countries dominated by Protestant Christian faith have been critical, because of the value they have placed on work and honesty, even when they have not seen prosperity as a sin. Since the 1980s gambling has been de-regulated in many countries, with the justification that gambling is legitimate economic activity and problem gambling should be the policy target.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document