Unity in Diversity: A Theological Analysis of the War on Gender Identity

"In today’s society, gender identity is redefined. This identity is now disconnected from biological sex and redefined as a cultural phenomenon. The implications are diverse not only from an anthropological point of view but also from a moral stand. As gender becomes a fluid concept, the war between the traditional point of view and the revisionist/progressist one is inevitable. This research reviews how in the last centuries society moved from Theism to Post-Theism and from Post-Theism to Post-Humanism. These shifts reflect a tendency of moral change not only in terms of human identity but also of human sexuality. In this paper, it is argued that a moral dimension is vital for a definition of gender identity. The theological assessment of this topic starts the epistemic endeavor analyzing the biblical foundation of cisgender and sexual dimorphism. In the nature vs. nurture paradigm a thorough analysis of the biblical account of creation and fall of man, attest to the fact that, regardless of how man is born, God’s redemption outlines anthropology, hamartiology, and soteriology. At the practical social level, the struggle for unity in diversity varies from a desideratum to a utopian reality. Nevertheless, the concept of diversity cannot be emptied of its moral dimension. From the Biblical point of view, the solution to this war on sexual identity is redemption, while from the secular point of view the solution to this war is relativism."

Nature vs. Nurture: The Two Opposing Behaviors of Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes in the Tumor Microenvironment

Similar to Janus, the two-faced god of Roman mythology, the tumor microenvironment operates two opposing and often conflicting activities, on the one hand fighting against tumor cells, while on the other hand, favoring their proliferation, survival and migration to other sites to establish metastases. In the tumor microenvironment, cytotoxic T cells—the specialized tumor-cell killers—also show this dual nature, operating their tumor-cell directed killing activities until they become exhausted and dysfunctional, a process promoted by cancer cells themselves. Here, we discuss the opposing activities of immune cells populating the tumor microenvironment in both cancer progression and anti-cancer responses, with a focus on cytotoxic T cells and on the molecular mechanisms responsible for the efficient suppression of their killing activities as a paradigm of the power of cancer cells to shape the microenvironment for their own survival and expansion.

The Face Module Emerged in a Deep Convolutional Neural Network Selectively Deprived of Face Experience

Can we recognize faces with zero experience on faces? This question is critical because it examines the role of experiences in the formation of domain-specific modules in the brain. Investigation with humans and non-human animals on this issue cannot easily dissociate the effect of the visual experience from that of the hardwired domain-specificity. Therefore, the present study built a model of selective deprivation of the experience on faces with a representative deep convolutional neural network, AlexNet, by removing all images containing faces from its training stimuli. This model did not show significant deficits in face categorization and discrimination, and face-selective modules automatically emerged. However, the deprivation reduced the domain-specificity of the face module. In sum, our study provides empirical evidence on the role of nature vs. nurture in developing the domain-specific modules that domain-specificity may evolve from non-specific experience without genetic predisposition, and is further fine-tuned by domain-specific experience.

Sociobiology Against Globalization: Hypothetical Battle in the Field of Evolutionary Psychology

As like as the well-known dichotomy of ‘nature vs. nurture’, factually, always a continuous dialectic has been manifest in relation to different rules and guidelines for management of social, political and economic concerns of societies through history; possibly, because every epoch demands its specific strategy, which is dependent on different causes like mass of people, quantity of demands, quality of necessities, educational position, social expectations, public toleration, availability of resources, system of distribution, domestic happenings, class struggles, volume of investments, etc. The impact of sociopolitical or socio-economic conditions on social courses in an indisputable fact, which deserve enough attention by decision makers if they are in search of finding better systems for advancement of their societies. In the present paper, globalization, as the most important contemporary socioeconomic philosophy, has been contrasted with sociobiology, or according to some critics pop sociobiology, as the greatest organic scheme about social behavior of human being, which has been supposed in the last century, to see that, really and based on the former hypothetical or practical endeavors or aspirations, with a variety of outcomes, can the innermost self-centered drives of human being, including national egocentricity and independence, compromise with the said new plans, including globalism and worldwide economical collaboration, for making a better life and surroundings. On the other hand, while globalization and sociobiology have faith in contradictory outlines for social development and interaction, with definite proximate and ultimate mechanisms, is their coexistence possible, at any rate.

Sociobiology Against Globalization: Hypothetical Battle in the Field of Evolutionary Psychology

As like as the well-known dichotomy of ‘nature vs. nurture’, factually, always a continuous dialectic has been manifest in relation to different rules and guidelines for management of social, political and economic concerns of societies through history; possibly, because every epoch demands its specific strategy, which is dependent on different causes like mass of people, quantity of demands, quality of necessities, educational position, social expectations, public toleration, availability of resources, system of distribution, domestic happenings, class struggles, volume of investments, etc. The impact of sociopolitical or socio-economic conditions on social courses in an indisputable fact, which deserve enough attention by decision makers if they are in search of finding better systems for advancement of their societies. In the present paper, globalization, as the most important contemporary socioeconomic philosophy, has been contrasted with sociobiology, or according to some critics pop sociobiology, as the greatest organic scheme about social behavior of human being, which has been supposed in the last century, to see that, really and based on the former hypothetical or practical endeavors or aspirations, with a variety of outcomes, can the innermost self-centered drives of human being, including national egocentricity and independence, compromise with the said new plans, including globalism and worldwide economical collaboration, for making a better life and surroundings. On the other hand, while globalization and sociobiology have faith in contradictory outlines for social development and interaction, with definite proximate and ultimate mechanisms, is their coexistence possible, at any rate.