The Road Less Taken

This chapter argues that atheists are academically successful but for a different reason. Rather than being motivated to please God by being well behaved, atheists are intrinsically motivated to pursue knowledge, think critically, and are open to new experiences. This turns out to be even more important for academic performance than being conscientious and cooperative. Disavowing a belief in God is not what causes teens to do well academically. Instead, it’s a selection effect—the kinds of people who are exceptionally curious and therefore engage in self-directed behavior tend to be the kinds of people who are willing to go against the grain and take an unpopular religious view. Some of the most academically accomplished adolescents were those who grew up with religious restraint but moved away from religion by their mid-twenties. The chapter also discusses the role of parents in transmitting beliefs about God to their children.

The Boundaries of Knowledge: The Unity of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Jewish Philosophy in Light of His Doctoral Dissertation

Two philosophical positions adopted by Soloveitchik in his doctoral dissertation continued to inform his Jewish philosophical writings throughout his career. The first position, epistemological pluralism, stands behind Soloveitchik’s approach to the religious view of causality and repentance in his writings during the 1940s–1960s. It also grounds his consistent use of the dialectical method. The second position, the eternal mystery of the unknown, comes from the Marburg neo-Kantian Paul Natorp; this idea is a consistent thread throughout Soloveitchik’s writings and a foundation of his existentialist writings through the late 1970s. The conclusion suggests how these two positions might be related to one another.

An Investigation Into the Factors Inhibiting the Development of Date Crop Insurance: the Case of Saravan County

The viability and efficiency of crop insurance policies depend on farmers’ demand and willingness for crop insurance. The present paper analyzes the insurance demand of 441 date farmers in Saravan County. Data showed that 68.87% of the farmers did not agree with insurance. The results of the ordinal logit model at five different levels indicated that awareness of insurance benefits, insurance record, previous-year yield, educational level, the standard deviation of income, orchard area, and satisfaction with insurance services are the main variables influencing the demand for insurance. The coefficient of variation of the likelihood of insurance adoption was estimated at all five levels. A 1% increase in satisfaction with insurance services increases the likelihood of a person’s shift from the ‘strongly disagree’ category to the ‘disagree’ category by 6.3%. Older date farmers abstain from insurance adoption, which needs reflection given the religious view in the region on interest rates on the one hand and the resistance of older people against modern risk management methods on the other.

Wyzwania antropologii chrześcijańskiej w dobie neuronauk

Challenges of Christian anthropology in the age of neurosciences The article deal with problem of the soul from the perspective of the science. Its purpose is to analyze the views of Francis Crick presented in the book The Astonishing Hypothesis – The Scientific Search for the Soul. The famous Nobel Prize winner tries to refute the religious view that man has a soul by referring to the research of the human brain. Crick’s thesis is as follows: the soul hypothesis must be rejected because of mental phenomena can be explained based on the work of the neurons. The scenario adopted in this way raises some problems. Some of them are outlined in this article. Artykuł podejmuje problem duszy w perspektywie neuronauk. Jego celem jest analiza poglądów Francisa Cricka przedstawionych w książce Zdumiewająca hipoteza, czyli nauka w poszukiwaniu duszy. Słynny noblista usiłuje obalić religijny pogląd, że człowiek posiada duszę, przez odwołanie się do badań ludzkiego mózgu. Teza Cricka jest następująca: Należy odrzucić hipotezę duszy, ponieważ wszelkie zjawiska umysłowe można wyjaśnić w oparciu o pracę neuronów. Tak przyjęty scenariusz rodzi pewne problemy. Niniejszy artykuł przedstawia niektóre z nich.

PENGARUH IDEOLOGI TERHADAP SIKAP RADIKAL PIMPINAN PONDOK PESANTREN DI TASIKMALAYA

Religious understanding is often with people and people using key words. The religious view of the teacher, the interpretation, and the context that surrounds it. Therefore, understanding can produce results from many literal and loud individuals or groups in understanding religion in a social, political, and religious context. This study aims to determine the ideology for the radical attitude of pesantren in Tasikmalaya. The result of this research concludes that the ideology factor has significant effect on radicalism aligned by the leadership of pesantren in Tasikmalaya. Ideological factors against radicalism in the leader of pesantren leaders in Tasikmalaya by 32% are being released by 68% by other variables not examined in this study such as economy, education, revenge and others.

‘The Ngabwe Covenant’ and the Search for an African Theology of Eco-Pneumato-Relational Way of Being in Zambia

This study explores the ways in which the born-again traditional leaders in Zambia are redefining neo-Pentecostal interaction with nonhuman creation. It demonstrates their attempts to rapture new religious imaginations in interstitial spaces between neo-Pentecostalism and Africa’s old spiritual systems. Since eco-spirituality is foundational to most African traditional institutions, some born again traditional leaders are forced to search for contextualized forms of neo-Pentecostalism to form new collective expressions of the spirituality of healing and reconciliation of all things. Grounded in the third space translation approach, this study analyzes ‘The Ngabwe Covenant’ which was made by the late neo-Pentecostal clergy and later traditional leader Ngabwe upon his inauguration as the traditional leader of Lamba-Lenje-and–Lima people of Central Province in Zambia. The study argues that Chief Ngabwe attempted to translate neo-Pentecostal spirituality through a traditional spiritual system of eco-relationality. In so doing, neo-Pentecostal spirituality and traditional religio-cultural heritages found new meaning and home within the hybridized (new) religious space. The study underlines that the resultant religious view which could be described as an African theology of eco-pneumato-relational way of being was envisioned as a new spiritual foundation for the Ngabwe kingdom. The article concludes that Rev. TL. Ngabwe’s theology of Spirit’s indwelling of the natural world is a critical contribution to neo-Pentecostal search for life-giving interactions between human and nonhuman creation.

The Philosophy of the Myōken: The Ethics of the Dead and Bodhisattvas

Today, the modern value systems that once held sway have fallen apart, and people throughout the world are wandering in an aimless state. Amidst this, we are pressed to ask, “What kind of a new ethics might we construct?” We need to consider the possibility of an ethics that focuses on the religious view of humankind (previously ignored by modernity), that goes beyond this life, and includes the next life. In this article, I examine the way of being of bodhisattvas in Mahāyāna Buddhism via the Lotus Sutra. According to the Lotus Sutra, human existence is one that necessarily relates with the other, and this relationship is not confined to this life, but continues from past lives to future lives. Here, I refer to this as “bodhisattva as existence.” On this basis, it is possible to think of an ethics of “bodhisattva as praxis” that considers the benefit of others even after death. This view of bodhisattvas in the Lotus Sutra lives on in Japanese Buddhism and can be said to point to a new possibility for ethics today.

Religious Education as Small ‘i’ Indoctrination: How European Countries Struggle with a Secular Approach to Religion in Schools

This article critically reviews the European religious education landscape and argues that a religious notion of religion prevails in most models, not only in confessional RE but also in integrative models and even in so-called alternative subjects that are compulsory for pupils who do not take part in confessional RE. Thus, schools in Europe provide hardly any chance for pupils to acquire a secular perspective on religion and religious diversity, based on a non-theological study of religion. Furthermore, the explicitly or implicitly religious character, particularly of integrative approaches or obligatory alternative subjects to confessional RE, is frequently hidden or played down. Building on analyses of separative (Germany) and integrative (Norway, England) models of RE, the article argues that carefully distinguishing between religious and secular approaches to religion in school is a serious human right’s issue, not least because only secular approaches may be compulsory. The predominant religious framing of religion – that is always linked to confirming the exceptional position of Christianity among the religions in RE – in combination with an actual lack of secular alternatives creates a climate of what may be called ‘small ‘i’ indoctrination’, i.e., an unquestioned discursive hegemony of a particular (Christian) notion of religion as a frame of reference for almost all education about religion, which is, furthermore, often represented as if it constituted not a particular religious view of religion, but a kind of universal perspective on religion. This results in highly problematic conceptualisations, both of religion in general and individual religions – most visibly in stereotyping ‘other’ religions, that are not complemented with an unbiased secular perspective. Thus, the subject matter religion is widely exempted from the secular approach to education in European schools, while a particular religious perspective on religion is promoted, even in models that are designed for all pupils of a religiously heterogeneous class.

How the Non-Religious View the Personality of God in Relation to Themselves

In this study we examined the applicability of personality measures to assessing God representations, and we explored how the overlap between personality judgments of self and God relate to strength of (dis)belief and closeness to God among atheists and agnostics. Using sample of 1,088 atheists/agnostics, we applied Goldberg’s Big Five bipolar markers as a standardized measure of personality dimensions, along with measures of identity fusion with God, belief strength, and sociosexuality, as this trait has been shown to be relevant in predicting religiosity. Our study revealed that personality measures can be used for research on the personality of supernatural agents. We also found that personality self-assessments were related to the assessments of God personality. Agreeableness was positively related to the perception of emotional stability of God, while conscientiousness and surgency were negatively related to perceived intellect and surgency of god, respectively. Also, intellect of the participants was related negatively to perceptions of God’s emotional stability and intellect. Perceived distance between the assessment of one’s own personality and the personality of God predicted the strength of (dis)belief, thus opening new interpretations into possible sources of belief and disbelief. Finally, echoing previous studies, we found that conscientiousness of God had a negative effect on SOI-R score.