Leviathan’s Wake: Demonology and the Passing of Order

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-140
Author(s):  
S. Jonathon O’Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
Indigenous Religions ◽  
Right Order

This chapter uses decolonial and settler colonial theory to analyse the spirit of Leviathan. Imagined both as a singular spirit and the sum of all demons, Leviathan is used to conceptualize ideas of chaos and counterfeit order. As chaos and counterfeit, they embody the base matter from which sovereignty makes order and all “illegitimate” forms of that order. Reading spiritual warfare’s demonology through Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, the chapter traces conjurations of Leviathan in images of primordial chaos, the neoliberal state, resurgent socialism and grassroots protest groups, and revitalized indigenous religions. It contends that Leviathan unsettles teleological narratives by embodying alternative possibilities that sovereign will has deemed over, but which ceaselessly pass into and as “right” order. The repetition of these passings means that—absent an apocalypse that ends all possibility of an otherwise—sovereignty must always reinvent itself in reaction to Leviathan’s passings to disguise (thereby actualizing) its own passing.

Longing for Home: The Impact of COVID-19 on Cambodian Evangelical Life

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-297
Author(s):  
Briana Wong
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Leadership ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
Mass Displacement ◽  
Interpersonal Connectedness ◽  
Indigenous Religions ◽  
The Impact

In Cambodia, the government's response to the COVID-19 crisis intersected with religious practice this year, as April played host both to the Christian Holy Week and the Cambodian New Year holiday, rooted in Cambodian Buddhism and indigenous religions. Typically, the Cambodian New Year celebration involves the near-complete shutting down of Phnom Penh, allowing for residents of the capital city to spend the New Year with their families in the countryside. Many Christians stay with their parents or other relatives, who remain primarily Theravada Buddhist, in the rural provinces throughout Holy Week, missing Easter Sunday services to participate in New Year's festivities at their ancestral homes. In light of the government's precautionary cancellation of the all-encompassing festivities surrounding the Cambodian New Year this spring, Christians who have previously spent Easter Sunday addressing controversial questions of interreligious interaction notably focused this year, through online broadcasting, on the resurrection of Jesus. In the United States, the near elimination of in-person gatherings has blurred the boundaries between the ministry roles of recognised church leaders and lay Christians, often women, who have long been leading unofficial services and devotionals over the phone and internet. In this article, I argue that the COVID-19 crisis, with its concomitant mass displacement of church communities from the physical to the technological realm, has impacted transnational Cambodian evangelicalism by establishing greater liturgical alignment between churches in Cambodia and in the diaspora, democratising spiritual leadership and increasing opportunities for interpersonal connectedness within the Cambodian evangelical community worldwide.

The Changing Faces of the Terror of Cultism in Nigerian Society: An Islamic Perspective

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 97-111
Author(s):  
Abdulrazaq Kilani
Keyword(s):  
Religious Movements ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
National Life ◽  
Indigenous Religions ◽  
Almost All ◽  
New Recruits ◽  
Populous Country

The menace of cultism in Nigeria society in general and our educational institutions in particular has reached an alarming stage that requires affirmative actions from all stakeholders. The scourge of cultism has claimed many lives of our youths and no serious authority can fold its arms and allow it to continue. It appears that the various efforts at curbing the menace have yielded no result. The corruption in most facets of our national life has finally subdued the educational institutions, which used to be the pride of place in the past. Most families are astonished to find out that children sent to school to learn and become better human beings in the society have initiated themselves into cult groups. The emergency of secret cultism has been characterized by some violent activities which include, physical torture of new recruits, maiming and killing of rival cult members and elimination of real and perceived enemies. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is composed of more than 250 ethnic groups with 36 states and one federal territory (Abuja). There are three major religions namely Islam (50%), Christianity (40%), and Africa Indigenous Religions (10%). The effect of globalization is also making other new religious movements to be making inroads into Nigeria. Nigeria has a population of about 141 million people (2006 census). Nigeria which is rich in both human and material resources is a country that is facing a lot of developmental challenges in almost all sectors due to poor leadership. The menace of cultism especially among youths and some influential people in the society represents one of the distortion facing the popular ‘giant’ of Africa. The aim of this chapter is to bring into the fore the menace of cultism in modern Nigeria as a brand of terrorism mind not the fact that there are even religious cults in both the developed and developing societies. The paper also adopted an Islamic lens to provide an analysis of the terror of cultism in contemporary Nigeria.

Religion and Locality

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-168
Author(s):  
Hisanori Kato
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Background ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Social Setting ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
The World ◽  
Nahdlatul Ulama ◽  
Indigenous Religions ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
Local Languages

Indonesia is known for its multicultural social setting, with approximately three hundred local ethnicities and five hundred local languages. Religions also have infiltrated into the life of Indonesia. Among six officially recognized religions, Islam occupies the majority religion in the country, and the total number of Muslims is almost two hundred million. That makes Indonesia the most populous Muslim country in the world. However, we also know that the legacy of pre-Islamic civilizations, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and indigenous religions, is still deeply rooted in Indonesian soil. With this socio-cultural background, Indonesian Islam has developed with the influence of local traditions. We see several Islamic rituals and practices that seem to have been "Indonesianized". Yet, this localized version of Islam is by no means favoured by more religiously strict Islamic groups. In 2015, Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Islamic organization, launched the so-called Islam Nusantara movement, which upholds the essence of local culture in Islam. This newly-emerged religious movement also presents a profound question in relation to the authenticity of religion, that is, whether religions are able to maintain the "original" rituals and practices without historical,  geographical and regional influences. We will explore the development of the Islam Nusantara movement with this question in mind.

Serial Homology as a Challenge to Evolutionary Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Serial Homology ◽  
The Core ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
Experimental Approaches ◽  
Evo Devo ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Development And Evolution

The problem of the repeated parts of organisms was at the center of the biological sciences as early as the first decades of the 19th century. Some concepts and theories (e.g., serial homology, unity of plan, or colonial theory) introduced in order to explain the similarity as well as the differences between the repeated structures of an organism were reused throughout the 19th and the 20th century, in spite of the fundamental changes during this long period that saw the diffusion of the evolutionary theory, the rise of experimental approaches, and the emergence of new fields and disciplines. Interestingly, this conceptual heritage was at the core of any attempt to unify the problems of inheritance, development, and evolution, in particular in the last decades, with the rise of “evo-devo.” This chapter examines the conditions of this theoretical continuity and the challenges it brings out for the current evolutionary sciences.

Integrating PET/CT unit into the NHS of a small sized EU state: A financial cost efficiency study

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
K Giannakou ◽  
D Kefallonitou ◽  
I Polycarpou ◽  
K Souliotis
Keyword(s):  
Cost Efficiency ◽  
Financial Analysis ◽  
National Health System ◽  
Emission Tomography ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Financial Cost ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Pet Ct ◽  
Investment Cost ◽  
Two Alternatives

Abstract Background According to the Ministry of Health in Cyprus, since 2009, every year more than 3.000 new incidents with neoplasm are diagnosed. The National Health System (NHS) of Cyprus aims to offer adequate health services, comparing them with European Union standards. However, it is lacking a Positron Emission Tomography-Computed Tomography (PET/CT) unit. The present study aims to examine whether an investment by the Cyprus NHS of a PET/CT unit can be financially sustainable. Methods A financial analysis of the operating revenues and expenses of a departmental PET/CT with F18-FDG was performed taking into consideration all related parameters. A detailed estimation of the unit's operation expenses (PET/CT unit supply, overheads, salaries, etc.) and incomes was produced for a 15-year period. This initial scenario was not financially viable and therefore two alternatives are also examined. Results After performing a detailed analysis and projection for the evaluation of the feasibility study in the initial scenario, the overall outcome is estimated negative deriving to a €2,2 million losses in the cumulative results by 2035. The second scenario concluded that the required number of incidents to reach a neutral cash flow after a 15-year period should increase from 8.971 to 23.430. The third scenario reached the conclusion that a parallel investment to the purchase of the PET/CT unit by installing a cyclotron unit in the Cypriot NHS provides cumulative results positive of €1,7 million for the PET/CT, in the same period, that can finance the largest part of the €2,5 million required for the installation of the cyclotron unit. Conclusions Our findings show that an investment of a sole PET/CT unit is not a financially viable. Alternative possibilities such as usage of a PET/CT operated by the private sector or supporting patients to travel to another country are within the economic terms recommended. Key messages From a financial viewpoint, the scenario of investing in a PET/CT unit by the Cyprus NHS is not viable. Examining alternative options for patients in need of a PET/CT unit, where the initial investment cost for the state is not financially viable.

scholarly journals Image Restoration by Learning Morphological Opening-Closing Network

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-107
Author(s):  
Ranjan Mondal ◽  
Moni Shankar Dey ◽  
Bhabatosh Chanda
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Image Restoration ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Source Code ◽  
Back Propagation ◽  
Image Features ◽  
Main Difficulty ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Order ◽  
Morphological Opening

AbstractMathematical morphology is a powerful tool for image processing tasks. The main difficulty in designing mathematical morphological algorithm is deciding the order of operators/filters and the corresponding structuring elements (SEs). In this work, we develop morphological network composed of alternate sequences of dilation and erosion layers, which depending on learned SEs, may form opening or closing layers. These layers in the right order along with linear combination (of their outputs) are useful in extracting image features and processing them. Structuring elements in the network are learned by back-propagation method guided by minimization of the loss function. Efficacy of the proposed network is established by applying it to two interesting image restoration problems, namely de-raining and de-hazing. Results are comparable to that of many state-of-the-art algorithms for most of the images. It is also worth mentioning that the number of network parameters to handle is much less than that of popular convolutional neural network for similar tasks. The source code can be found here https://github.com/ranjanZ/Mophological-Opening-Closing-Net

scholarly journals Determination of the order of fractional derivative for subdiffusion equations

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 1647-1662
Author(s):  
Ravshan Ashurov ◽  
Sabir Umarov
Keyword(s):  
Fractional Derivative ◽  
Fixed Time ◽  
Time Instant ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Fractional Modeling ◽  
Time Fractional Derivative ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Order

Abstract The identification of the right order of the equation in applied fractional modeling plays an important role. In this paper we consider an inverse problem for determining the order of time fractional derivative in a subdiffusion equation with an arbitrary second order elliptic differential operator. We prove that the additional information about the solution at a fixed time instant at a monitoring location, as “the observation data”, identifies uniquely the order of the fractional derivative.

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