bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Strange Bed fellows?
Authors: Shuman Joel James , Meador Keith G. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractIn the past 30 years, physicians and social scientists have begun to study the salutary effects of religious belief and practice on mental and physical health, concluding in general that a correlation exists between religiosity and health. Recently, some of these researchers have written for popular audiences, books and articles advocating religiosity for its health benefits. Generally speaking, these authors assume the existence of religion as such and of a universal human capacity for religiosity. This chapter suggests that the religion of this contemporary rapprochement is a distinctly modern phenomenon, a product of contemporary culture's cult of the self‐interested individual and a variant of the ancient Christian heresy called Gnosticism.
Christian Reflections on the Birth of “Religion”
Authors: Shuman Joel James , Meador Keith G. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis chapter sketches a genealogy of the religion of the contemporary rapprochement. Modern religion has its origins in the turn away from the biblical narrative and to natural philosophy among theologians and philosophers in the sixteenth century. The existence of God was tied during that time to the regnant philosophical and scientific discourses; when those discourses proclaimed themselves no longer in need of God as an explanatory apparatus, theology (as exemplified by the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher) turned to the thinking and feeling human subject as the basis for all religious belief. As Ludwig Feuerbach pointed out, however, the divinity described by this ontotheology could be explained as nothing more than a projection of deep human desire onto an imaginary being.
The Faithfulness of the Cross and the Idol of the Therapeutic
Authors: Shuman Joel James , Meador Keith G. 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
From the perspective of Christianity, religion as such is always liable to becoming idolatry. For Christians, the religious life is properly always a response to God's self‐giving in the life and the cross and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, the Christian response to sickness and suffering are also properly shaped by God's presence to the world in Jesus; this chapter suggests that that response may properly be characterized as apocalyptic.
Models and Models
Authors: Costa Newton C. A. da , French Steven 
Published: February 2006

AbstractIt has long been argued that the model-theoretic approach acquires a certain plausibility from the fact that models are also extensively used in science itself. However, the sense of “model” here is apparently quite different from that discussed in the previous chapter. This chapter starts by discussing the models of model theory and the models of science. It presents various arguments around this subject. The chapter goes on to discuss icons and analogies, in other words the fundamental idea that a model is an icon. The chapter continues by discussing partial structures and partial isomorphisms. The question is asked: Can we construct an overarching account of models in science? The criticisms and ideas of Achinstein are described in great detail in relation to this topic.
Partiality, Pursuit, and Practice
Authors: Costa Newton C. A. da , French Steven 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis chapter analyzes the heuristics of scientific practice in terms of the objects of that practice and their structural qualities. The notion of partial isomorphism will be crucial to this picture of the development of new theories and models from the old. The “social interests” approach and the more recent “mangle” of scientific practice are considered and rejected. Both downplay the heuristic force of the structural elements of theories and models themselves.
Three Levels of Teaching Durkheim
Authors: Tiryakian Edward A. 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
This chapter presents a pedagogical approach to Durkheim proposing three faces or three levels of Durkheim for undergraduate and graduate students. For the first level the students are given an initial exposure to Durkheim, typically through an introductory courses of sociology. The second level is more advanced, notably an undgergraduate level, where students take sociology of religion and sociological theory (depending on the academic institution, these courses may be open to both undergraduates and graduates). The third level is postgraduate level.
Teaching the Critics
Authors: Godlove, Jr. Terry F. 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
This chapter presents a sympathetic portrayal of Durkheim's “theory of religion” in the Elementary Forms of Religious Life (EF) in the context of major criticisms of that work. It shows that EF puts forward two independent approaches to its subject. One approach is functionalist; it tries to account for the existence and persistence of religion by appealing to the cohesion religion supplies to society; it accounts for the behavior and beliefs of individuals as an appeal to the needs of the whole. The other approach posits a causal mechanism by which religious ideas and symbols are generated in the very act of assembly — the theory of collective effervescence — what William Pickering calls “effervescent assembly” and Randall Collins “ritual solidarity”.
AIDS and the Ecology of Poverty
Authors: Stillwaggon Eileen 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis book examines the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the social and economic context of poverty and economic crisis in developing and transition countries. It challenges the assumption — implicit in AIDS policy — that differences in sexual behavior are adequate to explain differences in HIV prevalence between populations. Using an epidemiological approach, the book shows how people who are malnourished, burdened with parasites and infectious diseases, and who lack access to medical care are more vulnerable to all diseases. It explains the specific mechanisms by which undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, malaria, soil-transmitted helminths, schistosomiasis, and other parasitic illnesses increase the risk of HIV transmission and epidemic spread of HIV/AIDS in poor populations. A theme throughout the book is that the sexual transmission of HIV diverts attention from the social and economic context of profound poverty. The distraction of sex is compounded by Western stereotypes of African sexuality, perpetuated through reliance on anecdotal evidence and the construction of a notion of fundamental dissimilarity among peoples of different world regions. The book evaluates current methods in epidemiology and health economics, which do not take account of the interactions among diseases that increase risk of transmission of HIV in poor populations. It criticizes HIV-prevention policies as narrow, shortsighted, and dead-end because they fail to address the economic and social context in which risky behaviors occur. Finally, the book offers pragmatic solutions to social, economic, and biological factors that promote disease transmission, including the spread of HIV.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Stillwaggon Eileen 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis chapter examines the economic and health variables that distinguish sub-Saharan Africa from affluent countries which have lower rates of HIV. It shows the biomedical effects of economic conditions in Africa — such as poverty, inequality, lack of transport, lack of sanitary infrastructure, and lack of access to medical care — that contribute to poor health in general and consequently high rates of HIV transmission. Widespread malnutrition, malaria, schistosomiasis, and other parasitic diseases in sub-Saharan Africa contribute to higher risk of HIV transmission. This economic/biomedical conclusion implies a broad policy response for confronting HIV/AIDS in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Dualism in Latin America and the Caribbean
Authors: Stillwaggon Eileen 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis chapter applies the lessons of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America and the Caribbean. Economic and biological factors are important determinants of HIV transmission. Poverty, malnutrition, and parasites are endemic in much of the region, which also has additional risk factors for HIV transmission, including injecting drug use and millions of street children. Statistical analysis shows high correlation between HIV prevalence and GDP per capita, international migration, urbanization, and calorie supply. The results reflect the dualism of the Latin American and Caribbean economies and their dual HIV epidemics, and suggest the reasons why HIV is spreading fastest in lower-income groups.
Introduction
Authors: Richardson John 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of Nietzche's hostile views about Darwin and Darwinism. However, it is argued that this pointed animosity is misleading. Nietzsche appropriates the central idea of Darwinism, and his attacks on Darwinists really express the ways he tries to extend or build beyond it. This Darwinism in four areas of Nietzsche's philosophy is discussed: his biology, metaethics, ethics-politics, and aesthetics. An overview of the subsequent chapters in this book is presented.
Biology
Authors: Richardson John 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
This chapter presents a precise account of Nietzsche's biology, i.e., his explanation of organisms by those drives and wills. It is argued that we cannot understand Nietzsche's views on our values without seeing first and precisely how he thinks we are animals with drives. And we should only take those views about values seriously, if we have reason to think these foundations might let them be true.
Aesthetics
Authors: Richardson John 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
This chapter begins with a discussion of the “opposition” between beauty and truth, and the way Nietzsche seems to divide his loyalty between them. It then considers Nietzsche's genealogy and argues that Nietzsche wants us to redesign our aesthetic aims once again, by “self selecting” them. This fourth locus of Darwinism in Nietzsche is probably the most surprising of all.
Common Morality
Authors: Gert Bernard 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
The first part of this book provides a detailed description of the moral system that is commonly used, although usually only implicitly, by people when they are making thoughtful moral decisions and judgments. This system includes moral rules that prohibit doing the kinds of actions that need justification so as not to be considered immoral; moral ideals that encourage doing the kinds of actions that, if they do not involve violations of moral rules, are universally considered to be morally good actions; and a two-step procedure for determining when the violation of a moral rule is strongly justified, weakly justified, or unjustified. The first step of this two-step procedure uses the morally relevant features to provide a morally relevant description of the action. The second step involves estimating whether more harm would be caused by publicly allowing such a violation or by not allowing it. The second part of the book provides an analysis of the concepts of rationality and impartiality, and of morality as a public system that is known by all normal adults, and that it is not irrational for any of them to use to govern their own behavior and to judge the behavior of others. These analyses are used to provide a justification for the moral system — that is, to show that all rational persons who satisfy some plausible conditions would endorse the moral system as the system to govern the behavior of all of them — and to provide an answer to the question why one should be moral.
Zen Buddhism as the Ideology of the Japanese State
Authors: Welter Albert 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
This chapter reassesses Eisai and his attempt to reform the Japanese Buddhist state along the lines suggested by the model of Sung Ch’an, by examining the message of the Kōzen Gokokuron and the Ninnō-kyō (Sutra of Benevolent Kings), both texts central to Eisai’s theoretical vision. Eisai is a major figure in the Japanese Zen tradition, known for introducing Zen and winning major political support for it in the newly formed Kamakura bakufu. The discussion emphasizes not only the ideological sway that this text had over Eisai, but also how Eisai conceived of the practical implementation of the text’s ideological vision in terms of Ch’an institutions and practices observed by Eisai in Sung China. The study examines the Kōzen gokokuron in terms of three leading ideas around which Sung Ch’an had been formed: lineage, institutional organization, and conceptions of Ch’an vis a vis the Buddhist tradition as a whole. This examination concludes with a comparison of how Yen-shou was understood in the Kōzen Gokokuron and the Jōtō Shōkaku Ron, a text associated with Nōnin and the Daruma faction, a leading early contender for the mantle of establishing a separate Zen “school” in Japan.
Imagining Indian Zen
Authors: Mohr Michel 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis chapter examines the reasons Tōrei Enji’s Darumatara zenkyō settsū kōsho has been neglected despite its importance, bringing up the debate between the sectarian self-understanding and ideology of the present Japanese Zen schools, each of which claims the highest degree of authenticity as the true recipient of the historical Buddha’s legacy, the famous “special transmission outside [scholastic] teachings” (kyōge betsuden). The Ta-mo-to-lo ch’an ching, the Chinese translation of a canonical text primarily concerned with essential Buddhist meditation techniques, is a little-known sutra that has nevertheless played an interesting role in the development of the Chinese and Japanese Buddhist traditions, particularly the Ch’an/Zen schools. The Indian meditation treatise was translated into Chinese in the early fifth century CE, which attracted renewed interest among Sung Ch’an people as a text associated with Bodhidharma, and that was transmitted to Japan and later “rediscovered” by the eighteenth-century Japanese Zen teacher Tōrei Enji (1721-1792). The result of this encounter is his voluminous commentary entitled Darumatara zenkyō settsu kōsho, first published in 1784. Despite the importance of Tōrei in Rinzai Zen and the erudition of his commentary, there is no modern printed edition of the text and, seemingly, no in-depth study of it.
Meditation for Laymen and Laywomen
Authors: Riggs David E. 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
The text that is discussed in this chapter is about meditative practice and it confronts this misunderstanding in its very title, which emphasizes the ultimate realm of the awakening of the Buddha, not the details of meditation technique. The Buddha Samadhi (Jijuyū zanmai) is an informal piece written by Menzan Zuihō (1683-1769) during the early years of his teaching career at the request of laymen and laywomen, and was published some twenty years later in 1737. Menzan was a learned monk and a leading figure in the comprehensive reforms, which were sweeping the Sōtō schools during the eighteenth century. The expressed intention of the text is to help ordinary people to practice meditation, but the text is in fact an extended sermon in praise of the teaching of Dōgen (1200-1255), who is now regarded as both the founder and the source of all teachings for the Sōtō school.
Modernity and the Mystical: Technoscience, Religion, and Human Self-Creation
Authors: Carlson Thomas A. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis essay questions common assumptions about science as distinct from religion. Carlson starts by noting the intimate and practically inseparable connection between science and technology, arguing how “techno-science” is involved not only in producing knowledge of the world, but also a sense of what it means to be human. This sense of humanness involves a connection of techno-science and modernity in general, with the mystical realm usually associated with religion. Techno-science is understood precisely in the opposite sense as eliminating ignorance, of knowing (and mastering) all. Building upon the work of Weber and Heidegger, Carlson argues that this “will to mastery” is framed in the positing of an objective reality, which the knowing subject masters, based on the certainty of the knowing subject as framed historically in Protestant theology and the philosophy of Descartes. Yet, given the inaccessibility of much of the actual process of techno-science to most people, there is an important component of faith, Carlson cites the argument of Derrida that any authority is hence grounded on a “mystical foundation.” Carlson emphasizes that this act of human self-creation is based on an essential un-knowing of oneself, in particular, one’s destiny. The result, via our participation in increasingly powerful networks of knowledge and power, is a type of omniscience without comprehension of where we are heading-a sense of the human experience as conveying not finitude but infinitude, instability.
The Depths and Shallows of Experience
Authors: Putnam Hilary 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis essay focuses on the dimension of human experience; Putnam seeks to dispense the shallow notion of experience (including, but not limited to, religious experience) as something utterly reduced to sensations. He does so by carefully comparing the shallow Humean conception of experience, based on impressions or “pictures” formed on the senses, and the Kantian conception which combines perception and conceptual ideas in a continuous self which fuses these experiences over time. Putnam then extends this Kantian notion of experience to discuss Kant’s aesthetic argument concerning “indeterminate concepts,” those that both involve and extend the creative imagination. Putnam applies Kant’s treatment of indeterminacy to morality as a means of suggesting its relevance to religious experience, and also extends this notion to science, arguing that the technological and aesthetic process of scientific knowledge production is far more complex than a sense-data view would suggest. Putnam then returns to religious experience, specifically the problem of skepticism which may seem to result from a rejection of immediate sense-impression and embrace of indeterminacy. He discusses several responses, ultimately siding with the existentialist approach which stresses responsibility to live (and hence make choices) in spite of what cannot be fully proven following “reasonable” means. He concludes by noting the symmetry between atheists and fundamentalist fanatics, since for both, religious belief or nonbelief is obvious. This obviousness in his mind betrays a simplistic notion of experience, again pointing to the centrality of rethinking human experience prior to deep consideration of science and religion.
Science, Religion, Metaphor, and History
Authors: Russell Jeffrey Burton 
Published: February 2006

Abstract
This essay begins by distinguishing between universe and cosmos, the human understanding of the universe. To Russell, both science and religion are concerned with cosmos or meaning, yet cosmos is seriously fragmented in modern times, so he proposes an exploration of history and metaphor to heal cosmos. Augustine understood that God’s creation of the universe was a creation of meaning (cosmos) as well as substance, and biblical truths were understood in a symbolic as well as overt sense. Dante’s Paradiso culminated this rich tradition of cosmos, yet by the 16th century, religious reformation led to overemphasis on literal truth and de-emphasis on symbolism. With the growth of a concept of science in the 17th and 18th centuries, the reduction of cosmos to universe was secured. The loss of cosmos can, however, be healed by considering the importance of metaphor; metaphor opens up the meaning of reality. Russell introduces the term “metaphorical ontology” to suggest how deep meanings of things — cosmos — can be suggested in language, and claims that the proper language of religion is thus metaphor. The healing of cosmos will be aided by metaphorical ontology as it is enacted through religion, science, and other vistas on the ultimate nature of reality, leading humankind along paths yet unknown.
Experiencing Evolution: Varieties of Psychological Responses to the Claims of Science and Religion
Authors: Numbers Ronald L. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis essay examines in some detail a range of positions that people have adopted in coming to personal terms with evolution. Numbers focuses on four individuals, all from the United States and with scientific backgrounds, who struggled with reconciling evolutionary theory and theistic faith. He begins with Joseph LeConte, well-known in the late 19th century for his efforts at harmonizing theism and evolution. LeConte’s deep personal struggles over the loss of a two-year old daughter and his rejection of the atheistic “dragon of materialism” formed a powerful emotional thrust toward an espousal of evolution which avoided materialism, supported the hope of immortality, and maintained a resolute if not altogether traditional theism. Numbers’s second and third examples, J. Peter Lesley and George Frederick Wright were both trained in geology and had deep religious backgrounds. Both accepted modified forms of Darwinism, yet rejected full-bore evolutionary thought, understandable via life events and quite different forms of engagement with Christianity; Lesley rejecting much of it though not, in turn, embracing evolution, and Wright growing more fundamentalist with time. His final example, early 20th century creationist George McCready Price, found personal and professional satisfaction in well-publicized rejections of evolution. Numbers candidly recounts his own life story, in which emotional crisis precipitated in part by reconsideration of evolutionary theory, eventually led to rejection of a fundamentalist upbringing. Numbers closes by reiterating his belief that “feelings count often more than facts,” suggesting that this is why so many Americans continue to call themselves creationists rather than evolutionists.
Uneasy Alliances: The Faith Factor in Medicine; the Health Factor in Religion
Authors: Harrington Anne 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis essay explores the overlap between faith and science in the context of medicine: Does the mind, or do higher powers accessed by the mind, have power to heal the body? Harrington considers four related claims, all offering some scientific validation. The first is that participation in religious services is good for one’s health, which can apparently be explained only in part by religious communities serving as high-quality social networks. The second is that meditation reduces physical stress and aids healing, whether or not the meditator has any knowledge of or connection with a religious tradition. The third claim is that religious belief of any sort can heal the body, which has strong roots in American religious history, but seems to derive more from innate healing capacities of the mind rather than any sort of divine power. The fourth, in contrast, is that prayer conveys healing benefits, whether or not it is the patient or an intercessor who prays. This fourth claim is bolstered by certain controversial studies, and differs from the other three in its implicit support for divine power, thus divinity, whereas the remainder are exceedingly pragmatic in overtones — religion is important because it works. All four claims, however, are somewhat distinct and hardly form a coherent package. Overall, Harrington is concerned with the broad assertion that religion heals the body due to its insistence that science has provided conclusive proof, as well as its utilitarian emphasis on medicinal therapy versus any other benefits conveyed by religion. What may result is not the spiritualization of medicine, but the medicalization of religion.