Offers answers to such questions as "Is God always with me?" "Is there really a devil?" and "What is heaven like?

"--Maria DiBattista, Princeton University "This book provides a really original take on the literature of the fin de sicle and high modernism, suggesting how central the imaginative labor of literary works was to the social, philosophical, ...

Traditional theists believe that there exists an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly loving, and perfectly good God. They also believe that God created the world, sustains it in being from moment to moment, and providentially guides all events, in accordance with a plan, towards a good ending. Historically, most traditional theists have believed that God sometimes answers prayers for particular things. In keeping with the literature on this subject, these prayers are referred to as ‘petitionary prayers’. This article discusses several problems related (...) to the concept of the traditional theistic God's answering petitionary prayers. (shrink)

This volume explores the philosophical issues involved in the idea of petitionary prayer, where this is conceived as an activity designed to influence the action of the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good God of traditional theism. Theists have always recognized various logical and moral limits to divine action in the world, but do these limits leave any space among God's reasons for petitionary prayer to make a difference? Petitionary Prayer: A Philosophical Investigation develops a new account of the (...) conditions required for a petitionary prayer to be answered by employing the notion of contrastive explanation. With careful attention to recent developments in metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory, Scott A. Davison surveys the contemporary literature on this question. He considers questions about human freedom and responsibility in relation to different views of divine providence, along with the puzzles inherent in Christian teachings concerning petitionary prayer. Davison develops new challenges to the coherence of the idea of answered petitionary prayer based upon the nature of divine freedom, the limits of human knowledge, and the nature of those good things that require a recipient's permission before they can be given. He proposes new defences, building upon careful analysis of the shortcomings of previous proposals and clarifying the issues for future debate. (shrink)

In this article, we give much needed attention to the nature and value of corporate prayer by drawing together insights from theology, philosophy, and psychology. First, we explain what it is that distinguishes corporate from private prayer by drawing on the psychological literature on joint attention and the philosophical notion of shared situations. We suggest that what is central to corporate prayer is a “sense of sharedness,” which can be established through a variety of means—through bodily interactions (...) or through certain environments. Second, we argue that corporate prayer, when understood as a kind of shared situation, enables common knowledge, as well as a kind of alignment between participants. Through this process, participants’ attention is focused on the same target and affiliation between participants increases. Thus, we suggest, one benefit of understanding corporate prayer as a shared situation is that it establishes and deepens a sense of community in such a way that common purposes and goals can be enacted more effectively. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this essay I draw attention to conceptual similarities in Walter Benjamin’s and Theodor W. Adorno’s reflection about language, with special attention to Benjamin’s 1916 essay about language as such, including its theological impulses. In Adorno’s case, I concentrate on language theory as it comes forth in relation to his philosophy of music and the supposed language-character of music. I argue that this particular connection between Benjamin and Adorno is largely unexplored in the literature, and I show that their conceptual (...) affinities have far-reaching consequences for a proper understanding of Adorno’s philosophy as a whole. Music is of fundamental importance for Adorno’s critical theory, and this fact points to an intricate entwinement between materialism and theology, stemming from Benjamin’s theory of language. Thinking of music as secularized prayer means to emphasize that music relates to reality in a way that resembles the logic of Benjamin’s understanding of a pre-lapsarian language of... (shrink)

Research on delinquency reduction often highlights the importance of identifying and sanctioning antisocial and illegal activities so as to reduce the likelihood of future offending. The rise of digital technology complicates the process of detecting cybercrimes and technology enabled offenses, as individuals can use devices from anywhere to engage in various harmful activities that may appear benign to an observer. Despite the growth of cybercrime research, limited studies have examined the extent to which technology enabled offenses are detected, or the (...) behavioral and attitudinal factors associated with being unobserved or caught for one’s actions. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by estimating a multinomial regression model for self-reported computer hacking behavior and the likelihood of those actions being detected in a large international sample of juveniles (N = 51,059). The findings demonstrate significant differences between youth who hack without detection compared to those who are caught. The implications of this analysis for our understanding of cybercrime and its relationship to traditional delinquency are explored in depth. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to explore, from an ethical perspective, one particular branch of what is today called “spiritual medicine”: namely, prayer therapy. Several landmark studies in the literature will be thoroughly examined, respectively the classical study of Byrd (1988), the replica of Harris et al. (1999), and the controversial study of Leibovici (2001). Beginning with these studies and the related controversies surrounding them, the religious features and ethical consequences of prayer therapy are investigated. The (...) ethical aspects of prayer therapy – the informed consent issue, the issue of respecting bioethical principles, and the issue of medical competence in offering such techniques – are thoroughly addressed. Finally, an alternative way of framing the prayer therapy discussion is offered, in the context of public-private dichotomy. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

This article focuses on three questions. First it tries to understand why the difficulty man experiences when he is praying, is an inherent part of prayer. Everyone who prays, will experience that God is intangible. Rahner’s analysis of the human transcendental experience is a help in understanding this experience. Rahner shows that humans, by interacting in the concrete world, are capable of going beyond it. In deeds of for example love, freedom, wisdom one transcends concrete existence, and experiences to (...) be finitum capax infiniti. Yet, this possibility implies a very particular tension: man is naturally inclined to a transcendental reality but will never be able to fully capture it. Limiting oneself to concrete existence will be unsatisfying. Avoiding concrete existence will not work neither, for the transcendental experience only exists if linked to the tangible life we live here and now. Transcendental theology explains that living with this difficult but at the same time necessary tension between transcendental and categorical is the conditio sine qua non for meeting God.This means that, if prayer is such a meeting with God, it will always have an element of difficulty in it. He who prays, knows this. By subject and content this article is at the junction of philosophy, theology and spiritually. The author argues that this is necessary as Rahner’s transcendental theology is based on spirituality, a view shared by others, but which, in the opinion of the writer, is lacking in most of the secondary literature. Finally the author is of the opinion that aforementioned approach should not be limited to Rahner’s work. Should, out of contextual, theological as well as strategic reasons, contemporary theology not pay more attention to spirituality? (shrink)

Background: Individuals with psychopathic traits demonstrate an attenuated emotional response to aversive stimuli. However, recent evidence suggests heterogeneity in emotional reactivity among individuals with psychopathic or callous-unemotional (CU) traits, the emotional detachment dimension of psychopathy. We hypothesize that primary variants of psychopathy will respond with blunted affect to negatively valenced stimuli, whereas individuals marked with histories of childhood trauma/maltreatment exposure, known as secondary variants, will display heightened emotional reactivity. To test this hypothesis, the present study examined fear-potentiated startle between psychopathy (...) variants while viewing aversive, pleasant, and neutral scenes. Method: 238 incarcerated adolescent (M age = 16.8, SD = 1.11 years) boys completed a picture-startle paradigm and self-report questionnaires assessing CU traits, antisocial-aggressive behavior, and maltreatment. Results: Latent profile analyses identified four classes; primary variants (high CU traits, high aggression, low maltreatment; n = 46), secondary variants (high CU traits, high aggression, high maltreatment; n = 42), and two nonpsychopathic groups differentiated on maltreatment experience (n = 148). Findings from an ANOVA comparing identified groups on startle amplitude difference scores (i.e., aversive-neutral) suggested a main effect for group, F(3,196)=8.91, p<.001, η2 = .12. Primary variants of juvenile psychopathy displayed reduced startle potentiation to aversive images (threat and victim scenes), whereas secondary variants distinguished by high levels of childhood maltreatment did not. Conclusions: Findings add to a rapidly growing body of literature supporting the possibility of multiple developmental pathways to psychopathy (i.e., equifinality), and extend it by finding support for divergent potential biomarkers between primary and secondary psychopathy variants. (shrink)

The effects of distant, intercessory prayer on health outcomes have been studied in a range of randomised, blinded clinical trials. However, while seeking the evidentiary status accorded this ‘gold standard’ methodology, many prayer studies fall short of the requirements of the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki for the ethical conduct of trials involving human subjects. Within a sample of 15 such studies published in the medical literature, many were found to have ignored or waived key ethical precepts, (...) including adequate standards of care, patient confidentiality and informed consent. Prayer was considered in most studies to pose negligible or no risk to subjects, despite the fact that no clear mechanism of action nor any safety monitoring procedures were described. As a result, many studies did not meet basic ethical standards required of clinical trials of biophysical interventions, making application of their results ethically problematic. If investigators wish their data to adequately inform the use or rejection of intercessory prayer to improve health, these shortcomings should be addressed in future studies. (shrink)

As mentioned in the narrations, the messenger of Allah (pbuh) used to recite some prayers known as opening prayers such as Subhaneke, Wejjehtu and Allâhümme Bâid before reciting Fatiha surah while starting the obligatory and supererogatory worships (salat). In this study, it is aimed to find out the reflections of the abovementioned prayers in narrations, and to determine their authenticity and to reveal the reasons why jurisprudential sects preferred different prayers. Benefitting from literature review method, hadith inferences were made, and (...) moving from the books of refutation & corrections and biographies, the cases of the narrators of the hadiths, who took part in the ascription of the narrations, were put forth. After the investigation, it was determined that the narrated narrations about Subhaneke, an opening prayer, were found to have been narrated by eight different prophet companions in their later works through Aisha and Abu Sâ’id al-Khudrî in early hadiths resources; and that all these narrations were week in terms of authenticity. However, it was revealed that the most authentic narrations about the issue were those depending on the practice of Umar. In the hadith resources, it was seen that five different prophet companions narrated some narrations about the Wejjechtu prayer, and that the great majority of these narrations were through Ali, and that most of these narrations were authentic, yet only one reference was found to be weak. On the other hand, it was revealed that the narrations narrated by Abu Huraira between the opening prayer, Allâhümme Bâid, turned out to be genuine in terms of authenticity. For instance, while Hanafis and Hanbalis have preferred reciting Subhaneke during salat, Shafiîs have found it appropriate to recite the prayer Wejjectu in the salat. On the other hand, Malikis have thought that it was obligatory to start the salat with Surah Fatiha, and that it was makruh to recite these prayers in salat. (shrink)

In the period from January 1920 to December 1921 a cooperation between Jessie Fauset, Augustus Dill and W.E.B. Du Bois resulted in the publication of a periodical called “The Brownies’ Book” the first publication for North American black, and not white children and young people. The creation of “The Brownies' Book” was a pioneering event in African American literature in general and, more specifically, in the field of African American children's literature, as it was the first periodical composed and published (...) by African Americans for black children who, until then, searched in vain for material that included a perspective on their experience and history. This article argues that the TBBs were one of the harbingers of the movement called the Harlem Renaissance, constituting a children's literary materialization of the path towards the emergence of what the philosopher Alain Locke called the New Negro. What was being formulated was both the deconstruction of stereotypes associated with blacks and the active projection/creation of a positive identification with their local and ancestral community. This paper seeks to identify the post-WWI discursive strategies and practices of de-racialization proposed for “the children of the sun”, as W.E.B. Du Bois called them, in order to stop seeing themselves “through the eyes of others”. (shrink)

Scholars of the classical American philosophical tradition have not written much about prayer, despite the fact that almost every single one of the major figures of this tradition acknowledged its significance. The gap in the literature is notable in the case of George Santayana, who discusses prayer in several of his major works. And of all the classical American philosophers, Santayana may have the most fully developed treatment of prayer, particularly as it relates to the problem of (...) petitionary prayer. Yet his account of payer has not received much attention. This is surprising since, on the one hand, many of Santayana’s other views on religion and spirituality have been widely commented on, and, on the other hand, prayer has been a prominent topic in philosophy of religion in recent decades. And it makes sense for scholars of the classical American tradition nowadays to consider Santayana’s views about prayer, at the least because this tradition concerns itself with the problems of ordinary people, and to most Americans–and even to some atheist Americans–prayer seems to matter a great deal. Santayana’s treatment of prayer can be organized into two phases. First, he offers a twofold case against the common view that petitionary prayer is materially efficacious–that is, the view that petitionary prayer can do something to affect whether God brings about a desired state of affairs that would not have otherwise obtained had the request for it not been made. (shrink)

Since early 2014, i have studied what life is like for staff in a mental health sanatorium at a Ghanaian prayer camp. I have traveled to the camp on six occasions to observe its rhythms and routines and interview staff about their work. What follows is an informal reflection on the role of prayer camps as a source of mental health care in Ghana. The text is based on my experience conducting the research at the camp, rather than (...) a formal reporting of results. As such, I make minimal references to theoretical frameworks and previous literature and instead have relied on my own field notes and recreated conversations I had with one staff member in particular.Despite longstanding records of human rights abuses, many... (shrink)

This work provides a challenging new interpretation of the Second Alcibiades from the Platonic corpus, seeing it not only as a work of philosophic ethics, but also as one steeped in ancient literature, particularly Euripidean tragedy. The dialogue's philosophy is underpinned by an epistemology paying special attention to one's personal viewpoint, as its language shows. Dramatically, it presents a Socrates who falls into a similar trap from the one he steers Alcibiades away from, facing the dangers of a tragic character (...) thanks to their mutual attraction. Understood in this way the dialogue, here re-translated to bring out such features, is revealed as the work of an author with linguistic and literary gifts who is deeply conscious of the human condition. While reminiscent of the Academic Skeptic picture of Plato, it is the work of somebody still moving cautiously in that direction. (shrink)

Many contemporary philosophical accounts of petitionary prayer assume that petitionary prayer attempts to persuade God to act by giving God reasons to do that which God would otherwise not have done had the prayer not been offered. Alternatively, this essay suggests there is an account of what petitionary prayer accomplishes that has largely been left underexplored in contemporary philosophical literature: the Secondary-Causal Account. I suggest that the work of the Italian Reformer, Peter Martyr Vermigli, is a (...) helpful resource for developing this alternative which is faithful to Scripture, meets confessional requirements, and can meet common intuitions about prayer. (shrink)

A pesquisa quantitativa tem sido predominante nos estudos sobre oração. A partir de uma abordagem qualitativa baseada na análise de conteúdo, este estudo examina as relações entre oração e saúde. Os dados são provenientes de 104 vídeos com entrevistas gravadas com participantes de igrejas Católicas, Protestantes e Pentecostais. A análise levantou quatro categorias descritivas do uso da oração: 1. Como estratégia de coping (enfrentamento) (62,5%); 2. Para manter viva a espiritualidade (15,3%); 3. Como técnica de empoderamento mútuo (8,6%); 4. Como (...) ponto de mudança no processo existencial (13,4%). Correspondem a estas categorias, respectivamente, os tipos de oração: 1. Petição, Lamentação; 2. Descanso, Sacramental, 3. Intercessão; 4. Conversão, Chamado; Movimento do Espírito. De acordo com a literatura corrente, a oração proporciona formas de conexão orientadas “para dentro/si mesmo” ; “para cima/divino” e “ para fora/outro” . Os resultados sugerem uma modalidade de conexão ainda não estudada: a conectividade epifânica – que se origina no sagrado, vem ao encontro do humano, e marca um ponto de mudança no processo existencial. Os achados indicam estreita relação entre oração e saúde mental e espiritual, como diminuição da ansiedade, direção e propósito na vida, e apontam a importância de maiores estudos na interface entre teologia e psicologia da religião. Palavras-chave: Oração. Coping religioso espiritual. Saúde mental e espiritual. Psicologia da religião. Subjetividade.Quantitative research has been prevalent in the studies on prayer. Using a qualitative approach based on content analysis, this study examines the relationship between prayer and health. Data come from 104 recorded interviews of participants from Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal traditions. The analysis found four categories that describe the use of prayer: 1. Prayer as a religious coping strategy (62,5%); 2. Prayer as a discipline to keep spirituality alive (15,3%); 3. Prayer as a technique of mutual empowerment (8,6%); 4. Prayer as a turning point in the existential process (13,4%). The types of prayer corresponding to these categories are: 1. Petitionary and Lamentation; 2. Rest and Sacramental; 3. Intercessory prayer; 4. Conversion; Calling; Movement of the Spirit. According to the current literature, prayer provides inward, outward and upward connectivity. The results indicate an additional connectivity not yet studied: the Epiphanic connectivity, which comes from sacred to human and marks a turning point in the existential process. The outcomes suggest a close relationship between prayer and spiritual and mental health by decreasing anxiety, making meaning and purpose in life, and point out the relevance and need for further studies on the interface between theology and psychology of religion. Key words : Prayer. Spiritual religious coping. Mental and spiritual health. Psychology of religion. Subjectivity. (shrink)

One measure of the validity of [Joseph] Frank's insight is the extent to which other versions of his ideas appear in other contexts: for if "spatial form" refers to something real, it cannot have escaped notice by other readers. One thinks, for example, of Northrop Frye's description of the critic viewing all the elements of the poem as a simultaneous array before him; or of Gaston Bachelard's evocative descriptions of The Poetics of Space. Or Pound's interest in ideographic script; or (...) the frequent critical association of modern literature with impressionist painting. Or Eliot's poet synthesizing Spinoza, the sound of the typewriter, and the smell of cookery into a unified whole. Or—at the root of it all, perhaps—Poe's insistence on the unified effect of the story or poem.1 All of these instances reflect a more or less casual assumption of the basic premise of Frank's essay. More recently another critic, Frank Kermode, has offered an alternative description of this general problem. In The Romantic Image2 he assesses symbolist poetic theory; here the verbal image , autonomous and autotelic, presumably unites meaning and feeling without intervening reflection or discourse: the "image" so hypostatized seems very close to a "spatial" form, and certainly the suppression of discourse, of reflection generally, follows from the disruption of syntax and narrative that results from the impulse toward "spatial" effects. Provisionally, we might say that Joseph Frank's essay is grounded in an essentially formalist conception of the literary work as artifact, and that the striking features of his argument result from an attempt to assimilate extended works to a theory basically lyric in its orientation: as corollary, we must assume that the modern writers he cites had themselves operationally defined the concept in the course of their writing. · 1. Northrop Frye, "Literary Criticism," in The Aims and Methods of Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literature, ed. James Thorpe , p.65. See also Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology , p. 21. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas . Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound . T.S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets," Selected Essays , p. 247. Edgar Allan Poe, review of Twice-Told Tales, in Works, 17 vols., ed. James A. Harrison 11: 104-13.· 2. Frank Kermode, The Romantic Image . William Holtz, professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is currently preparing an edition of an unpublished juvenile manuscript by Charlotte Brontë. (shrink)

Time is integral to human culture. Over the last two centuries people's relationship with time has been transformed through industrialisation, trade and technology. But the first such life-changing transformation – under Christianity's influence – happened in late antiquity. It was then that time began to be conceptualised in new ways, with discussion of eternity, life after death and the end of days. Individuals also began to experience time differently: from the seven-day week to the order of daily prayer and (...) the festal calendar of Christmas and Easter. With trademark flair and versatility, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill uncovers this change in thinking. He explores how it took shape in the literary writing of late antiquity and how it resonates even today. His bold new cultural history will appeal to scholars and students of classics, cultural history, literary studies, and early Christianity alike. (shrink)

In this paper I have not, of course, presented all the embryological data that can be collected from the Talmudic and Midrashic literature. More details can be found in Julius Preuss' classical work on biblical and talmudic medicine, now available in Fred Rosner's English translation and in a French M.D. thesis by Martine Michel.75 I also did not present any data on teratology, and did not deal with the very rich Jewish mystical lore, the Cabbala. But a few comments are (...) in order here about the material on embryology.There are very few original ideas in the Talmudic corpus on embryology, but it is obvious that the Sages were well aware of the Greek and Roman theories on embryology.The fact that the Talmud is a compilation that was built up slowly, during several centuries, explains why the information recorded in it cannot be ascribed solely to one school of thought or one clear-cut influence.When a definite problem was difficult to solve because there were many different theories about it, the Sages based their opinion on a famous experiment that seemed to offer guarantees of validity. This was the case with the controversial problem of the formation of the embryo and its sexual differentiation, where the Sages made use of an experiment allegedly initiated by Cleopatra.The Sages were ready to discuss scientific problems with non-Jewish scholars and even to accept their arguments. This was the case with the important topic of the time of the entry of the soul into the embryo. But the legal conclusions drawn from the Sages' opinion were not consistent with those declared by Churth Fathers such as Tertullian. Embryotomy, for instance, was permitted by Jewish law.Wide interest, scholarly discussions, suggestive descriptions and readiness to inquire and to obtain detailed information characterized the Talmudic discussions of embryology.In conclusion, I quote a Talmudic text that reviews the whole process of embryological development through the sequence of prayers of a faithful Jew who learns that his wife is expecting a baby.The first three days, [he should pray to the Lord] that the seed should not putrefy.From the third to the fortieth day: that the child should be a male.From the fortieth day to the third month: that there should not occur any superfetation, which could lead the first embryo to be a fetus compressus.From the third to the sixth month: that an abortion should not occur.From the sixth to the ninth month: that the birth should be without problems.76. (shrink)

Compilation of works chiefly on Hindu philosophy, Hindu prayers and commentaries on Vedic texts.

The history of the writing of philosophy could be seen as divided between two tendencies. One tendency involves a constant reconfiguration of the literary and stylistic elements involved in the way philosophy is written. Examples include most texts in the philosophical canon, from Plato's dialogues, or Aristotle's lecture notes, to Marcus Aurelius's diary, Augustine's confessions, the pseudepigrapha of the Areopagite, Anselm's prayer, Montaigne's essays, Descartes's meditations, Kierkegaard's play with pseudonymy, or Wittgenstein's "remarks."1 In such texts, we find a self-reflective (...) attitude toward the writing of philosophy, where the medium and the message become intriguingly interconnected. On the other hand, a... (shrink)