Monthly Archive for June, 2011

Religion and Spirituality in Society Journal first issue published

Published on June 28, 2011 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

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The first issue of Volume 1 of The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society is now available.

Volume 1, Number 1 contains:

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The Promotion of Devotion

Published on June 17, 2011 in Book, Headline and Newsletter. 0 Comments

The Promotion of Devotion: Saints, Celebrities and Shrines by Donn James Tilson is now available as part of the Religion in Society series.

What do St. Francis, Oskar Schindler, Princess Diana and Smokey Bear have in common? Religion, communication and devotion form an inseparable trinity of being, interwoven strands of a tapestry that has enveloped all faiths through the ages. A closer examination of ancient-to-modern-day culture, including such “folk-hero-saints” as St. Francis and others, suggests that religion and devotion – oftentimes coated with a layer of promotion – lie at the heart of much of the history of communication and of civilization itself.

Written in a lively yet informative style, The Promotion of Devotion is the first comprehensive analysis of the convergence of religion and promotional communication from historical origins to modern times. Ten chapters take the reader on a journey through unexplored territory from an introduction to sainthood across faith traditions, the interplay of religion and communication in the making of saints – religious and secular (and animal) – discussions of town and vestment partnerships, road tours of the sacred, the use of the arts to promote devotion, to heavenly endorsements, lost shrines and re-animation. A concluding chapter reflects on the implications of the intersection of devotion and communication. Chapters provide a look at the sacred across a wide spectrum of faith traditions, illustrated with a selection of intriguing photos.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: secular humanist with a soul

Published on June 13, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

From Merel van Beeren at The Christian Science Monitor…

“There’s a Hassidic legend, that in any point of history, there are 36 pure souls for the sake of whom God doesn’t destroy the world. And they don’t know who they are,” Rebecca Newberger Goldstein tells me. It’s early Saturday morning, and we’re having breakfast in New York’s Washington Square Hotel. The dining room is small, put in almost as an afterthought, and barely has room for the guests waiting anxiously for a fresh batch of coffee. Goldstein is dressed in a simple long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, not completely awake – the consequence of constant travel and an inability to sleep in unfamiliar surroundings.

As a young girl, Goldstein suspected that her father, a cantor in White Plains, New York, was one of those 36 pure souls. In her latest novel, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, the figure of Azarya, a boy genius who has to choose between science and his orthodox Jewish community, is another one. Secular saints, Goldstein calls them both, comparable to Spinoza. More…

A Quibble Over Godlessness

Published on June 11, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Benjamin S Nelson at talking philosophy…

Atheism and agnosticism. If you ask some people, atheism is just a sexed up version of agnosticism. After all, atheism is about what you believe (or don’t believe), and agnosticism is about what you know (or don’t) — so when we say that we’re atheists, we’re just putting accent on the fact that God is really really really super unlikely.  But others will say that atheism and agnosticism are perfect companions. They’ll tell you that agnosticism is just a closeted form of atheism. After all (they’ll say), since agnostics dislike being called ‘theists’, they must be atheists — the one position collapses into the other.

To see an example of this contrast in action, consider the views of Bertrand Russell and Anthony Grayling. Russell argued for atheism in public, and only called himself an agnostic among philosophers. That’s because he thinks there’s a significant gulf between atheism and agnosticism. By contrast, in a difficult-to-parse exchange with Jerry Coyne, Anthony Grayling begged to differ — an agnostic is either an atheist, or just plain irrational.

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Religion as Moral Innovation

Published on June 10, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From 3quarksdaily.com…

Jolene H. Tan reviews John Teehan’s In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence, in Evolutionary Psychology

In the Name of God, by John Teehan, takes the evolutionary framework and applies it to the reading of religious texts. The result is a provocative discussion of the ubiquitous phenomenon of religious belief that can change the way we understand the role of religion in society. With a selected focus on the religious text of Judaism and Christianity—the Bible, Teehan persuasively argues that these religions evolved to solve the unique problems encountered as humans moved from small societies organized based on kinship, to larger complex societies made up of strangers. Religion, therefore, is an institutionalization of a moral code to implement large-scale cooperation beyond kin, in order to promote “social cohesion and individual striving” (p.192). Morality and violence, far from being contradictory concepts, are merely flip sides of the same coin.

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Taking the Plunge

Published on June 9, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

From Stefany Anne Golberg at The Smart Set…

For both believers and nonbelievers, the pageantry of religion can sometimes feel like a whole lot of extraneous fuss. The stained glass, the snakes, the evocation of languages long dead — up, down, up, down, up again, down again. Shouldn’t you just be able to close your eyes and stand alone on a mountaintop wearing a simple shift to commune with the spirits? Even that, though, is a kind of ritual. The externalization of faith, whatever form it takes, is unavoidable. But it is also meaningful to and necessary for religion. All religions share a common attempt to communicate something that is, by all accounts, inexpressible: belief. Religion itself isn’t belief but razzamattazz, and all the glorious rituals and songs and handicrafts are in the service of communication, and thus, community. Years ago, during my youthful days in theater school, a teacher summed up this process quite nicely. “But Stefany,” she exhaled, “no one cares what you are feeling. An audience only knows what you are feeling through what you are doing.”

As religious expressions go, I’ve always been particularly attracted to the river baptism though, like most, I’ve only seen them performed in movies and television (and now the internet). River baptisms are inextricably associated with the American South, and with the first few decades of the 20th century, when many of the rituals that made the South alternately special or wretched were in their waning days. On display now in a single room at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City is a wonderful exhibit of picture postcards documenting the practice in the South and Midwest between the late 19th and early 20th centuries called “Take Me to the Water: Photographs of River Baptisms.” More…

Subjective Consciousness: A Unique Perspective

Published on June 1, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Quinn O’Neill, 3 Quarks Daily

As an atheist, I sometimes get asked if I’m afraid of what’ll happen when I die. Naturally, I’m not afraid of going to Hell or any other supernatural place and I’m not afraid of being dead, but admittedly, there is something that scares me. I’m afraid that I could someday exist in (or as) another body.

My position is not so much that we can exist in more than one body but that we don’t know that we can’t, or even how probable it would be. To be clear, I’m not suggesting any kind of dualism or that we might be reincarnated with our current attributes and personality traits. Consistent with a naturalistic view of the world, I accept that consciousness and perception of self are generated by the brain, so when the brain dies there’s nothing left – no thoughts, no personality, and no spirit. The chance of an identical physical copy of my brain arising again is very small, so perhaps I needn’t worry.

But it’s here that the worry creeps in. Is an identical physical copy of my brain what it would take for me to experience being alive again? In order to establish that subjective consciousness is restricted to a single body, we’d have to understand how it works and we really don’t.

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