TruthBook Religious News Blog

According to the latest survey released by the Barna Group, the vast majority of adults believe that America’s youths are not being prepared for life. From everything from physical, intellectual and spiritual development, the 1000 adults polled agreed that the nation’s youngsters do not receive “above average preparation.”

Less than one in five adults said they believe children under the age of 13 are being “superbly” or “pretty well prepared” for life emotionally, physically, spiritually, intellectually or physically. Fewer than one out of every twenty adults said they believe that America’s youngsters are receiving above average preparation in all five of those areas of life.

Of the categories, adults apparently felt youth intelligence was strongest.; 18 percent of adults said the children are intellectually stimulated. Physical development also drew similar responses, with 16% of adults saying children were superbly prepared. Meanwhile, in terms of emotional preparation, the adults said only 12% of children seemed prepared; Spirituality fared worse with adults seeing only 8% of the nation’s children as above average.

Barna then separated the groups into subgroups as a means to find patterns in the result.

According to Barna, “liberals and conservatives were both more concerned about the preparation children receive than were those who have a middle-of-the-road perspective,” they said. “Conservatives were notably less impressed with the preparation children get than were liberals in regard to moral and spiritual development. There was a 15-point gap separating the two segments in relation to moral development and a 22-point distinction related to spiritual preparation”

The research group also found that the “most consistent disparities in viewpoints related to people’s faith experience,” they wrote.

George Barna, head of the company, said he feels the parents must get help from social institutions to raise their children.

“Parents alone may be incapable of fully equipping their children in every area of life,” Barna explained, “but the common strategy of waiting for social institutions to provide whatever their children need is seriously flawed. The family is obliged to invest in the life preparation of their own children. Passing youngsters off to agencies ought to be a secondary option, not the primary means through which values, skills and perspectives are developed. And when parents lean on institutions for help in this process, unless parents hold those institutions accountable, the quality of life preparation that our nation’s children receive will continue to fail to meet even the most modest standards.”

It’s intriguing that comparatively few adults have identified the plight of children as one of the key issues requiring greater attention,” noted the California-based researcher. “The major concerns listed by voters pertain to their own needs and dreams. What does it say about our society when we admit that our children are being set up for failure, but we do not incorporate that challenge among the most pressing issues facing the nation? Even if government policies and programs are not the ultimate solution, you would expect adults to integrate the needs of children into the dialogue regarding the future of our country.”

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Friday, October 29, 2004

Pupils in the UK must be familiar with six religions

UK - As well as studying Christianity throughout their time at school, pupils should learn about the five other principal religions in Britain and be taught a secular world view "where appropriate", a Government report said yesterday.

The first national framework for religious education, which sets out the principles all state schools should follow, said that by the age of 16 pupils needed to have "encountered in sufficient depth" Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.

They should also have had opportunities to study other religious traditions such as the Baha'i faith, Jainism and Zoroastrianism, and secular philosophies such as humanism.

The report said pupils should be encouraged to reflect on "the important contribution religion can make to community cohesion and the combating of religious prejudice and discrimination".

Launching the framework, Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, said it "set out a system that places value on the ethos and morals that religious education can establish, independent of any faith. At all stages, pupils should be confident about being able to share their beliefs without fear of embarrassment or ridicule. They should be willing to listen to and learn from others who hold views different from their own."

The government achieved the rare feat of uniting the Church of England and the British Humanist Association yesterday in supporting the publication, for the first time, of a national framework for religious education in schools.

The proposals, which have advisory status, recommend that Christianity should have a central place in RE but children should be taught about other faiths and secular beliefs.

Religious education is compulsory but governments have shied away from laying down what should be studied in detail, leaving the matter to be decided locally.

Representatives of the Churches and the five main faith communities have collaborated with the Government and others since October last year to produce the framework. Charles Clarke has himself been thoroughly committed to the process. He has had the courage to address an issue that some others might have thought would open up risky controversy. He found that the Churches and faith communities were willing and able to work well together.

By John Clare

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Thursday, October 28, 2004

Spiritual belief helps mental illness

People suffering with mental health disorders who have a faith in a higher power' have a better chance of managing their illnesses and improving their health.

They even live longer, Dr Andrew Powell, a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, told a multi-faith meeting of mental health professionals, carers and patients in Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, on Thursday last week.

Dr Powell, who edits the College's newsletter, told the meeting of more than 40 guests from all over the borough of Barnet, that scientific studies carried out by the medical profession in Britain and America in recent years prove that a belief in a higher power or higher consciousness is as valuable in the pursuit of sound mental health as traditional medication and therapy.

Dr Powell, a retired NHS psychologist, said it was unthinkable a few years ago for medical professionals in the fields of psychiatry and psychology to consider the value of spirituality in their ongoing search for better ways of treating mental health patients.

"But the time has arrived when many in my profession now believe a belief or faith in a higher consciousness is as important, if not more important, than conventional medicine," he said. "Quantum physics has provided an important platform for such a belief in recent years. There are many in my profession who now believe that medical science is the pursuit of helping the patient from the bottom up while a belief or faith in a higher consciousness is helping the patient from the top down."

Dr Powell, who was brought up in the Christian tradition', and has published medical papers in which he admits experimenting with LSD and mescaline with his professor's approval while studying medicine and psychiatry, was careful to make a distinction between religion and spirituality when describing what he meant by a faith in a higher power.

"I see the world's religions as rivers, all flowing into the same sea," he said.

During a question-and-answer session, which followed Dr Powell's talk, a member of the audience drew a round of applause when he described how he had witnessed what the doctor had described, first hand, after attending addicts' meetings He said: "People who have repeatedly failed to stop drinking or taking drugs for many years, miraculously stop when they find a higher power through Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous."

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Wednesday, October 27, 2004

The religious kids are alright

College students who participate in religious activities are more likely to have better emotional and mental health than students with no religious involvement, according to a national study of students at 46 wide-ranging colleges and universities.

Also, students who don't participate in religious activities are more than twice as likely to report poor mental health or depression than those who attend religious services frequently.

Being religious or spiritual certainly seems to contribute to one's sense of psychological well-being, says Alexander Astin, co-principal investigator for the study of 3,680 third-year college students. The study was released this week by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles.

Those who participate in religious activities also are less likely to feel overwhelmed during college.

Religious involvement includes such activities as reading the Bible or other sacred texts, attending religious services and joining religious organizations.

These findings are important because psychological well-being declines during the college years, Astin says. One in five students has sought personal counseling since entering college, and 77 percent of college juniors report feeling depressed frequently or occasionally during the past year. Only 61 percent of the students were depressed frequently or occasionally when they first started college.

The study defines spirituality as desiring to integrate spirituality into one's life, believing that we are all spiritual beings, believing in the sacredness of life and having spiritual experiences.

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Sunday, October 24, 2004

Researchers are seeking the truth about wisdom

Some pretty smart people are trying to figure out just what wisdom is.

One definition focuses on its practical side — a mastery of day-to-day life, the ability to make good judgments and grasp limitations.

Another is more abstract, suggesting that wise people see beyond their own affairs to humanity's greater whole.

Psychologists are peering into the many facets of wisdom, trying not only to sort out ways to define it but also to answer such questions as whether it is related to spirituality, gender, culture or even childhood experiences.

"In the past 10 to 15 years, there's been a lot of interest in wisdom," said developmental psychologist Carolyn Aldwin of Oregon State University. Aldwin helped lead a series of studies known as the Wisdom Project, based at the University of California, Davis.

One clue to comprehending wisdom can come from the sort of people who are widely considered wise, said Linda Kelly of Cal-Davis. Surveys asking for the names of wise people repeatedly turn up such spiritual figures as the Dalai Lama, the pope, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa, Kelly said last summer in Honolulu at a meeting of the American Psychological Association.

But few studies examine whether spirituality and wisdom are connected, she said.

Spirituality is not the same thing as religiousness, Kelly noted. Spiritual people have been represented as "seekers," she said. They are explorers who create their own sense of truth. And they are not bound by religious tradition in connecting with the sacred, whether it be God, nature or some other higher power.

By contrast, religious people have been characterized as "dwellers." They are inhabitants of the space created by established religious institutions, and they relate to the sacred through being part of a community of like-minded people.

To test whether religiousness or spirituality could predict practical wisdom, Kelly and her colleagues studied almost 1,000 Cal-Davis alumni, ages 23 to 74, for signs of either trait. The scientists also assessed the subjects' coping skills and such things as their feelings of mastery over life's events.

As it turned out, feelings of mastery were the best predictor of wisdom — followed by coping skills that involved taking positive actions; advancing age; not attending religious services; and spirituality, which the team found contributed modestly.

SELF-TRANSCENDENCE

Other research presented in Honolulu supports the idea that women may be more likely to exhibit another factor that appears related to wisdom, a quality known as self-transcendence.

Self-transcendence is the ability to stop being preoccupied with one's own life and instead focus more intensely on others and the whole of humanity, said Patricia Jennings of the University of California, San Francisco.

Several studies have suggested that women are more likely than men to be self-transcendent, Jennings said. She and colleagues from Boston's VA Healthcare System and Fordham University tested that idea in an exclusively aged population.

Some 1,100 older participants — more than two-thirds of them men — gave information about their lives today compared with 10 years ago. The survey measured self-transcendence with statements such as "I am more likely to engage in quiet contemplation," and alienation with statements like "I feel my life has less meaning."

The women (whose average age was 69), indeed, tended to be more self-transcendent than the men (average age 73), the study found. Some experts have suggested that women may score higher for self-transcendence because an ability to relate to and feel for others is central to their own identities, Jennings explained.

Other results indicated that men experience self-transcendence differently than women. For instance, to the researchers' surprise, men who were more alienated were also more likely to be self-transcendent.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Scientists are also exploring how wisdom differs across cultures. In Western societies, wisdom seems more directed at logic and pragmatics — that is, how best to achieve the good life, said Thao Le of Cal-Davis.

Eastern cultures appear more concerned with transcendent wisdom — with its focus on transforming consciousness, and setting oneself free of objects and beliefs. "It's about personal insight and developing self-knowledge, Le said.

She evaluated two groups of about 100 subjects each — European Americans and Vietnamese immigrants — for qualities of practical and transcendent wisdom, expecting the European group would score higher for practical wisdom, and the Vietnamese higher for transcendent wisdom.

She also suspected that people with either type of wisdom would be more likely to have positive personality traits like openness and values like benevolence and less likely to have traits like neuroticism and values centered on power, conformity and security.

"Wisdom is really about change and transformation," Le said.

The study found that people with higher levels of openness were more likely to have practical or transcendent wisdom and that the more people embraced values like conformity and security, the less likely they were to rate highly for practical or transcendent wisdom.

The European Americans scored higher on practical wisdom, but no difference was found between the groups in transcendent wisdom, once education levels were taken into account.

ROOTS OF WISDOM

Yet, psychologists aren't just trying to see where to find wisdom. They hope to trace where wisdom begins. Some researchers, for instance, have explored whether it's rooted in childhood experiences.

Adversity in childhood has consistently been linked to problems in adulthood. But many people who undergo traumatic events at any age find them transformative in a positive way, said Loriena Yancura of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

"So what makes the difference between these two outcomes?" Yancura asked.

She and colleagues suspected that childhood adversity with no real support from friends or family would lead to alienation, while adversity with support would foster self-transcendence.

The team studied data on the childhood experiences of almost 600 men ages 57 to 96. Were they ever quarantined for an illness? Did they suffer poverty? Parental divorce? Death of a sibling? Serious illness or injury? Verbal abuse? Whippings? And did they get emotional support from parents or grandparents, teachers, siblings or friends?

Six years later, the subjects' levels of self-transcendence and alienation were measured.

The older the men were, the more likely they were to be alienated, Yancura reported, but the more support they received, the less likely they were to be alienated. Also, the more support they had, the more likely they were to be self-transcendent.

In short, childhood adversity by itself doesn't influence wisdom-related psychological growth in late life, Yancura said. And, she added, positive experiences, such as support from others, "had surprisingly long-term effects."

For more about the psychology of wisdom,visit www.prometheus.org.uk/Files/MarchandOnWisdom.PDF

BY KAREN PATTERSON
Dallas Morning News
Posted on Sun, Oct. 24, 2004

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MSG, Obesity and Poison - It's In All Of Our Foods

I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, so did a friend of mine, John Erb. He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo, and spent years working for the government.

He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called The Slow Poisoning of America. In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies.

No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so the scientists have to create them. They make these morbidly obese creatures by injecting them with a chemical when they are first born. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats (and humans?) to become obese They even have a title for the race of fat rodents they create: "MSG-Treated Rats."

MSG?

I was shocked too. I went to my kitchen, checking the cupboards and the fridge. MSG was in everything! The Campbell's soups, the Hostess Doritos, the Lays flavored potato chips, Top Ramen, Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Swanson frozen prepared meals, Kraft salad dressings, especially the"'healthy low fat" ones. The items that didn't have MSG had something called Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, which is just another name for Monosodium Glutamate. It was shocking to see just how many of the foods we feed our children everyday are filled with this stuff. They hide MSG under many different names in order to fool those who catch on.

But it didn't stop there. When our family went out to eat, we started asking at the restaurants what menu items had MSG. Many employees, even the managers, swore they didn't use MSG. But when we ask for the ingredient list, which they grudgingly provided, sure enough MSG and Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein were everywhere. Burger King, McDonalds, Wendy's, Taco Bell, every restaurant, even the sit down ones like TGIF, Chilis', Applebees and Denny's use MSG in abundance. Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to be the WORST offender: MSG was in every chicken dish, salad dressing and gravy. No wonder I loved to eat that coating on the skin, their secret spice was MSG!

So why is MSG in so may of the foods we eat? Is it a preservative or a vitamin?

Not according to my friend John. In the book he wrote, an expose of the food additive industry called The Slow Poisoning of America, , he said that MSG is added to food for the addictive effect it has on the human body.

Even the propaganda website sponsored by the food manufacturers lobby group supporting MSG at this website, explains that the reason they add it to food is to make people eat more. A study of elderly people showed that people eat more of the foods that it is added to. The Glutamate Association lobby group says eating more benefits the elderly, but what does it do to the rest of us?

"Betcha can't eat just one", takes on a whole new meaning where MSG is concerned!

And we wonder why the nation is overweight? The MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn't added.

Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, it is an addictive substance: NICOTINE for FOOD!

Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the prepackaged meals, soups, snacks and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday.

The FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food. They claim it's safe to eat in any amount.

How can they claim it is safe when there are hundreds of scientific studies with titles like these?

-The monosodium glutamate (MSG) obese rat as a model for the study of exercise in obesity. Gobatto CA, Mello MA, Souza CT, Ribeiro IA. Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2002.

-Adrenalectomy abolishes the food-induced hypothalamic serotonin release in both normal and monosodium glutamate-obese rats. Guimaraes RB, Telles MM, Coelho VB, Mori RC, Nascimento CM, Ribeiro Brain Res Bull. 2002 Aug.

-Obesity induced by neonatal monosodium glutamate treatment in spontaneously hypertensive rats: an animal model of multiple risk factors. Iwase M, Yamamoto M, Iino K, Ichikawa K, Shinohara N, Yoshinari Fujishima Hypertens Res. 1998 Mar.

-Hypothalamic lesion induced by injection of monosodium glutamate in suckling period and subsequent development of obesity. Tanaka K, Shimada M, Nakao K, Kusunoki Exp Neurol. 1978 Oct.

Yes, that last study was not a typo, it WAS written in 1978. Both the medical research community and food "manufaturers" have known MSG's side effects for decades!

Many more studies mentioned in John Erb's book link MSG to Diabetes. Migraines and headaches, Autism, ADHD and even Alzheimer's.

But what can we do to stop the food manufactures from dumping fattening and addictive MSG into our food supply and causing the obesity epidemic we now see?

Even as you read this, George W. Bush and his corporate supporters are pushing a Bill through Congress. Called the "Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act" also known as the "Cheeseburger Bill", this sweeping law bans anyone from suing food manufacturers, sellers and distributors. Even if it comes out that they purposely added an addictive chemical to their foods.

The Bill has already been rushed through the House of Representatives, and is due for the same rubber stamp at Senate level. It is important that Bush and his corporate supporters get it through before the media lets everyone know about MSG, the intentional Nicotine for food.

Several months ago, John Erb took his book and his concerns to one of the highest government health officials in Canada. While sitting in the Government office, the official told him "Sure I know how bad MSG is, I wouldn't touch the stuff!" But this top level government official refused to tell the public what he knew.

The big media doesn't want to tell the public either, fearing legal issues with their advertisers. It seems that the fallout on the fast food industry may hurt their profit margin.

By Elizabeth Joyce
www.new-visions.com

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Thursday, October 21, 2004

Where physics meets faith

For those seeking spirituality in physics, there's wisdom in an old song lyric: "You can't get to heaven on roller skates 'cause you'll roll right past those pearly gates." It also puts into perspective the buzz surrounding "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" - a recent film that links spirituality and quantum physics.

Neither Newtonian mechanics nor quantum physics is on a glide path to spiritual enlightenment. They take a road that leads to knowledge of the natural world. Nevertheless, man is often tempted to stretch that knowledge beyond its legitimate domain.

Even great scientists fall prey to this temptation. Newton was into magical thinking. Kepler saw God's hand in the celestial order of the planets. While Kepler's laws remain a guide to planetary orbits and Newton's mechanics still find myriad uses, the mysticism of those men is forgotten.

Quantum theory, with its emphasis on the role of the observer, can be especially misleading. According to the theory, an entity - say, an electron - exists as a virtual set of all its possible states until an observer tries to pin it down. The term "state" means the set of properties that characterize the entity, such as its location or the direction of its spin.

The act of observation forces the electron to manifest a specific value for each such property from among all the possible values that property can assume. Quantum theory does not predict what that value will be. It does predict very precisely the probability with which any one of the possible values will be observed if the experiment is repeated many times.

This sometimes gives rise to the statement that physics reduces matter to a "field of probabilities." That's meaningless. Probability is a mathematical, not a physical, concept. Quantum theory uses that math to predict events. It does not imply that matter is physically just a bunch of probabilities.

Another common misperception is the role of the observer in quantum mechanics. A more useful term is "interaction." It's the interaction of the electron with its external environment - the experimenter's probe, for example - that is involved. Quantum physics happens whether or not there is an observer. After all, there's no conscious observer to mediate hydrogen fusion inside the Sun.

Mystical thinkers overlook this point. They stretch the theory to claim that it implies that human thought can manipulate matter and determine physical reality. That's the core message of "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" This delusion reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of a difference between natural science and spirituality.

Science is a faith-based authoritarian effort to understand the natural world. It's based on faith that the world is understandable and assumes that knowledge gained from our Earth-bound perspective has universal validity. This faith is disciplined by the authority of verifiable experimental and observational facts and by moments of discovery. Spiritual faith is introspective. It is validated by individual experience and inspired by epiphanies. Trying to co-opt physics to support such faith loses whatever truth physics has to offer.

"Bleep" codirector Mark Vicente admitted as much in a radio interview when he said the film is not about truth, it's about philosophy. He gave the game away when he added, "I don't know what science is."

By Robert C. Cowen

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The God Gene - Bad Science Meets Bad Theology

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson once declared religious belief to be "the greatest challenge to human sociobiology and its most exciting opportunity to progress as a truly original theoretical discipline." In other words, Wilson admitted that belief in God is a fundamental challenge to the theory of evolution, since evolution cannot explain why this belief could be so widespread, so powerful, and so closely tied to human existence. Now, Dean Hamer, a geneticist at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, claims to have found the genetic explanation for belief in God--a "God gene" that provides an evolutionary explanation for faith.

Dean Hamer's work, published as The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes, is certain to attract considerable attention. His argument that belief in God is tied to a mix of factors, but localized in a specific gene, fits the reductionistic mind of the age. Furthermore, Hamer's hypothesis is the natural complement to a purely materialistic worldview.

The evolutionary worldview leads to a specific understanding of the human being, and that understanding is derived directly from pure materialism. The human being is understood to be the product of an evolutionary process that at every point is explained purely in terms of natural factors. Humans are collections of atoms and molecules, and all consciousness, belief, emotion, and moral judgment must be explained by nothing more than biochemical processes within the brain. In other words, the evolutionary mindset must reject the notion of a soul and must insist that all dimensions of consciousness are definable in purely physical terms.

In the physicalist worldview, the entire human experience is explained by genes, chemicals, natural selection, and the environment. In The God Gene, Dean Hamer attempts to explain religion and spirituality in purely physical terms. Yet, before he ever discusses the so-called "God gene," he redefines faith itself. Hamer begins his book with an illustration drawn from Buddhist spirituality, and within the first ten pages he redefines faith as "self-transcendence." As he explains, "Self-transcendence provides a numerical measure of people's capacity to reach out beyond themselves--to see everything in the world as part of one great totality. If I were to describe it in a single word, it might be 'at-one-ness'."

Hamer admits that self-transcendence will sound a bit "flaky" to many readers. Nevertheless, "it successfully passes the test for a solid psychological trait." Well, at least it passes the test of serving as a useful tool that will enable Hamer to continue his argument.

Continuing in a New Age direction, Hamer distinguishes "spirituality" from "religion." Spirituality is tied to his notion of self-transcendence while religion is far more concrete, rational, and particular. As Hamer explains, "the self-transcendence scale tries to separate one's spirituality from one's particular religious beliefs by eschewing questions about belief in a particular God, frequency of prayer, or orthodox religious doctrines or practices." Just in case we missed the point, Hamer adds: "Even individuals who dislike all forms of organized religion may have a strong spiritual capacity and score high on the self-transcendent scale." So . . . the "God gene" doesn't actually have anything directly to do with believing in God, only [he argues] with the capacity to achieve self-transcendence.

Once Hamer makes this argument, he surrenders any sense of integrity in talking about a "God gene." Having redefined his terms, limiting the specific scope of his explanatory thesis to concern for self-transcendence that can be understood in purely secular terms, Hamer undermines his own argument and marketing strategy.

Since Hamer is a research scientist who hopes to maintain some credibility in the scientific community, he must offer several caveats concerning his work. First, Hamer acknowledges that a genetic explanation can go only so far in explaining the totality of religious experience, or even self-transcendence. "The specific gene I have identified is by no means the entire story behind spirituality," Hamer admits. "It plays only a small, if key, role; many other genes and environmental factors also are involved. Nevertheless, the gene is important because it points out the mechanism by which spirituality is manifested in the brain."

Before considering Hamer's genetic argument, what are we to make of his category of self-transcendence? Hamer uses the term to mean "spiritual feelings that are independent of traditional religiousness." These feelings are not tied to belief in any specific God, nor are they tied to traditional practices of devotion or to any doctrinal structure. Instead, self-transcendence "gets to the heart of spiritual belief: the nature of the universe and our place in it." Individuals who experience self-transcendence "tend to see everything, including themselves, as part of one great totality." In other words, they sound like individuals who have graduated from the latest New Age self-help course in spirituality.

A central mechanism of Hamer's argument is a self-transcendence scale devised by psychiatrist Robert Cloninger of Washington University Medical School in St. Louis. Cloninger's instrument for measuring self-transcendence, known as a "TCI inventory," provides Hamer with a way of establishing a research base in which he could study twins in order to determine whether belief in God is a heritable characteristic.

Fast-forwarding Hamer's argument, he claims to have discovered a gene known as VMAT2, which controls the flow of monoamines within the brain. Monoamines are chemicals in the brain that can make us feel pleasurable, ecstatic, or depressed. Monoamines include dopamine and serotonin, and are customarily released by psychotropic drugs and hallucinogenics. Thus, Hamer argues that evolution explains why many individuals possess the VMAT2 gene, and are thus more likely to have their monoamines regulated in a way that leads to self-transcendence. Following so far?

Once self-transcendence is defined as the goal of this evolutionary process, and once VMAT2 is identified as the gene responsible for creating the feelings associated with self-transcendence, Hamer is well on his way to arguing that self-transcendence plays a role in evolution by fostering optimism in individuals possessing the trait. Such optimism leads to better health, to a more positive outlook toward the future, and increased likelihood that these individuals will have children and hand down their genes through the biological process.

This physicalist explanation, limiting something like faith in God to purely chemical factors, is necessary because Hamer and his colleagues are committed materialists. He provides an explicit admission of this fact in The God Gene. Insisting that a scientific explanation for belief in God must be expressed in terms of chemistry and physics, Hamer explains: "Proponents of this view often are called 'materialists' because they believe that all mental processes can ultimately be accounted for by a few basic physical laws. Most scientists, including myself, are materialists."

In other words, as a committed materialist, Dean Hamer is looking for an explanation of belief in God that will fit his evolutionary worldview. In order to do this, he has to jettison all that is customarily associated with theism, avoid everything that has to do with the content of belief, and redefine his entire concern in terms of self-transcendence--an experience he admits can be purely secular. In other words, Dean Hamer tells us absolutely nothing about belief in God and very little about modern genetics.

This point was made devastatingly clear in a review of The God Gene published in the current issue of Scientific American. Carl Zimmer, another major evolutionary theorist, blasts The God Gene as bad science and reckless argument.

As Zimmer notes, "The field of behavioral genetics is littered with failed links between particular genes and personality traits. Those alleged associations at first seemed very strong. But as other researchers tried to replicate them, they faded away into statistical noise. In 1993, for example, a scientist reported a genetic link to male homosexuality in a region of the X chromosome. The report brought a huge media fanfare, but other scientists who tried to replicate the study failed. The scientist's name was Dean Hamer."

That's right. Dean Hamer is most famously [or infamously] known for his claim to have found a genetic explanation for male homosexuality. That study created a firestorm in the press, and though it was never replicated in order to establish scientific credibility, it quickly became standard fare for arguments claiming homosexuality to be absolutely natural, and therefore normal.

As Zimmer laments, "Given the fate of Hamer's so-called gay gene, it is strange to see him so impatient to trumpet the discovery of his God gene." Zimmer then turns the table on Hamer, arguing that The God Gene should have been entitled A Gene That Accounts for Less than One Percent of the Variants Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study. In the scientific community, that's undiluted condemnation.

It is laughable to suggest that belief in God is tied to any genetic structure that can be accounted for in this way. The Bible provides an authoritative explanation for our capacity to know God. As the book of Genesis makes clear, human beings are made in the image of God. It is the imago dei that explains the fact that we are the only creatures able consciously to know God, and to know Him intimately.

Any effort to create a genetic explanation for a generic experience of self-transcendence will fall far short of scientific credibility. More importantly, it will fall tragically short of providing an adequate theological explanation for how human creatures can know our Creator. That explanation is found only within the Bible, and is itself a knowledge revealed to us by our Creator.

The God Gene becomes a parable for our postmodern times--further evidence of the lengths to which clever humans will go in trying to deny that we were made by a Creator who designed us with the capacity to know Him. The book is bad science and bad theology combined, but it does succeed in making one point clear: Materialism just can't answer the big questions.

---

By Albert Mohler

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Practicing faith keeps seniors out of rest homes

People older than 50 who had strong religious or spiritual practices were less likely to enter a nursing home.

The study of 811 older patients found that those who reported the most religious activities and spiritual practices spent less time in nursing homes or rehabilitation centers.

The study's results tally with past research linking religious involvement or spiritual experience to well-being.

Dr. Harold Koenig, a researcher at Duke University Medical Center, said that the study involving patients treated at one hospital over 15 months is unique in that it links religious and spiritual practice to the need for long-term health care.

"This doesn't prove that religion improves health," Koenig told Reuters Health. But he said there does seem to be a connection between belief and health which researchers are seeking to sort out.

The Archives of Internal Medicine published the study in July. The patients who most often practiced religious activities in their personal lives or felt "spiritual experiences" spent an average of fewer than 12 days in long-term care. That compared with nearly 27 days among patients who reported the fewest private religious practices.

The relationships existed regardless of the patients' physical health, researchers say.

This study is one of many exploring the effects of belief and spiritual practices on health.

Earlier studies by Koenig and others found, for instance, that older adults, particularly women, who attend religious services at least once a week seemed to have a survival advantage over those attending less often. A 1998 study found that older medical patients who attended church weekly or more often were less likely to have been admitted to a hospital during the previous year than those who attended less often.

Michael W. Parker of the University of Alabama's School of Social Work and Center for Mental Health and Aging recently studied with Koenig and others the effects of religion on depression and general mental health. A study found that older people in five Alabama counties who scored high on three measures of "religiosity" reported having fewer symptoms of depression and better mental health than did those who scored low on the measures.

The measures of religiosity were defined as organized, non-organized and intrinsic. Researchers published their study in Aging & Mental Health in September 2003.

The study also found, however, that those who scored high on only one of the three measures reported fewer symptoms, too. The researchers concluded that the relationship of "religiosity with mental health in older adults is complex" and more study is needed.

Such studies are changing the way some health-care professionals do their work.

Parker and others wrote that, based on research, clinicians should encourage positive spirituality for their patients. Clinical workers should learn to access their patients' spiritual health and "to provide ... desired spiritual intervention," Parker and others said.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations now requires a spiritual assessment in its regulations. Also, half of medical schools in the United States now provide such training, according to a 1998 report.

Assessments help determine what "coping mechanisms" a patient has. He or she might want prayer if the clinician shares a similar belief system or might like referral to a chaplain or pastor, said Parker and his co-researchers. But they also noted that some religious beliefs and activities "can adversely affect both mental and physical health."

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Tuesday, October 19, 2004

What Derrida Really Meant

Along with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, who died last week in Paris at the age of 74, will be remembered as one of the three most important philosophers of the 20th century. No thinker in the last 100 years had a greater impact than he did on people in more fields and different disciplines. Philosophers, theologians, literary and art critics, psychologists, historians, writers, artists, legal scholars and even architects have found in his writings resources for insights that have led to an extraordinary revival of the arts and humanities during the past four decades. And no thinker has been more deeply misunderstood.

To people addicted to sound bites and overnight polls, Mr. Derrida's works seem hopelessly obscure. It is undeniable that they cannot be easily summarized or reduced to one-liners. The obscurity of his writing, however, does not conceal a code that can be cracked, but reflects the density and complexity characteristic of all great works of philosophy, literature and art. Like good French wine, his works age well. The more one lingers with them, the more they reveal about our world and ourselves.

What makes Mr. Derrida's work so significant is the way he brought insights of major philosophers, writers, artists and theologians to bear on problems of urgent contemporary interest. Most of his infamously demanding texts consist of careful interpretations of canonical writers in the Western philosophical, literary and artistic traditions - from Plato to Joyce. By reading familiar works against the grain, he disclosed concealed meanings that created new possibilities for imaginative expression.

Mr. Derrida's name is most closely associated with the often cited but rarely understood term "deconstruction." Initially formulated to define a strategy for interpreting sophisticated written and visual works, deconstruction has entered everyday language. When responsibly understood, the implications of deconstruction are quite different from the misleading clichés often used to describe a process of dismantling or taking things apart. The guiding insight of deconstruction is that every structure - be it literary, psychological, social, economic, political or religious - that organizes our experience is constituted and maintained through acts of exclusion. In the process of creating something, something else inevitably gets left out.

These exclusive structures can become repressive - and that repression comes with consequences. In a manner reminiscent of Freud, Mr. Derrida insists that what is repressed does not disappear but always returns to unsettle every construction, no matter how secure it seems. As an Algerian Jew writing in France during the postwar years in the wake of totalitarianism on the right (fascism) as well as the left (Stalinism), Mr. Derrida understood all too well the danger of beliefs and ideologies that divide the world into diametrical opposites: right or left, red or blue, good or evil, for us or against us. He showed how these repressive structures, which grew directly out of the Western intellectual and cultural tradition, threatened to return with devastating consequences. By struggling to find ways to overcome patterns that exclude the differences that make life worth living, he developed a vision that is consistently ethical.

And yet, supporters on the left and critics on the right have misunderstood this vision. Many of Mr. Derrida's most influential followers appropriated his analyses of marginal writers, works and cultures as well as his emphasis on the importance of preserving differences and respecting others to forge an identity politics that divides the world between the very oppositions that it was Mr. Derrida's mission to undo: black and white, men and women, gay and straight. Betraying Mr. Derrida's insights by creating a culture of political correctness, his self-styled supporters fueled the culture wars that have been raging for more than two decades and continue to frame political debate.

To his critics, Mr. Derrida appeared to be a pernicious nihilist who threatened the very foundation of Western society and culture. By insisting that truth and absolute value cannot be known with certainty, his detractors argue, he undercut the very possibility of moral judgment. To follow Mr. Derrida, they maintain, is to start down the slippery slope of skepticism and relativism that inevitably leaves us powerless to act responsibly.

This is an important criticism that requires a careful response. Like Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Mr. Derrida does argue that transparent truth and absolute values elude our grasp. This does not mean, however, that we must forsake the cognitive categories and moral principles without which we cannot live: equality and justice, generosity and friendship. Rather, it is necessary to recognize the unavoidable limitations and inherent contradictions in the ideas and norms that guide our actions, and do so in a way that keeps them open to constant questioning and continual revision. There can be no ethical action without critical reflection.

During the last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida became preoccupied with religion and it is in this area that his contribution might well be most significant for our time. He understood that religion is impossible without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or adequately represented by imperfect human beings.

And yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are shaped by people who claim to know, for certain, that God is on their side. Mr. Derrida reminded us that religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the great religious traditions are profoundly disturbing because they all call certainty and security into question. Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger.

As the process of globalization draws us ever closer in networks of communication and exchange, there is an understandable longing for simplicity, clarity and certainty. This desire is responsible, in large measure, for the rise of cultural conservatism and religious fundamentalism - in this country and around the world. True believers of every stripe - Muslim, Jewish and Christian - cling to beliefs that, Mr. Derrida warns, threaten to tear apart our world.

Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief - one that embraces uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we do not understand. In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don't know so that we can keep the future open.

In the two decades I knew Mr. Derrida, we had many meetings and exchanges. In conversation, he listened carefully and responded helpfully to questions whether posed by undergraduates or colleagues. As a teacher, he gave freely of his time to several generations of students.

But small things are the measure of the man. In 1986, my family and I were in Paris and Mr. Derrida invited us to dinner at his house in the suburbs 20 miles away. He insisted on picking us up at our hotel, and when we arrived at his home he presented our children with carnival masks. At 2 a.m., he drove us back to the city. In later years, when my son and daughter were writing college papers on his work, he sent them letters and postcards of encouragement as well as signed copies of several of his books. Jacques Derrida wrote eloquently about the gift of friendship but in these quiet gestures - gestures that served to forge connections among individuals across their differences - we see deconstruction in action.

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Mark C. Taylor, a professor of the humanities at Williams College and a visiting professor of architecture and religion at Columbia, is the author, most recently, of "Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption."

October 14, 2004
By MARK C. TAYLOR

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Evolution and Religion Can Coexist, Scientists Say

"Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." —Albert Einstein

Joel Primack has a long and distinguished career as an astrophysicist. A University of California, Santa Cruz, professor, he co-developed the cold dark matter theory that seeks to explain the formation and structure of the universe.

He also believes in God.

A detail from the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City depicts God during the creation of Adam. Though many view religion and science as mutually exclusive, a recent study suggests that many scientists believe in evolution and the existence of a higher being.

That may strike some people as peculiar. After all, in some corners popular belief renders science and religion incompatible.

Yet scientists may be just as likely to believe in God as other people, according to surveys. Some of history's greatest scientific minds, including Albert Einstein, were convinced there is intelligent life behind the universe. Today many scientists say there is no conflict between their faith and their work.

"In the last few years astronomy has come together so that we're now able to tell a coherent story" of how the universe began, Primack said. "This story does not contradict God, but instead enlarges [the idea of] God."

Evolution

The notion that science and religion are irreconcilable centers in large part on the issue of evolution. Charles Darwin, in his 1859 book The Origin of Species, explained that the myriad species inhabiting Earth were a result of repeated evolutionary branching from common ancestors.

One would be hard pressed to find a legitimate scientist today who does not believe in evolution. As laid out in a cover story in the November issue of National Geographic magazine, the scientific evidence for evolution is overwhelming.

Yet in a 2001 Gallup poll 45 percent of U.S. adults said they believe evolution has played no role in shaping humans. According to the creationist view, God produced humans fully formed, with no previous related species.

But what if evolution is God's tool? Darwin never said anything about God. Many scientists—and theologians—maintain that it would be perfectly logical to think that a divine being used evolution as a method to create the world.

Still, science does contradict a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible—on the origin of the universe—which says that God created heaven and the Earth and the species on it in six days.

Scientific evidence shows that the universe was actually formed about 13.7 billion years ago, while the Earth was formed around 4.5 billion years ago. The first humans date back only a hundred thousand years or so.

Like other scientists of faith, Primack, who is Jewish and reads the Bible regularly, argues that the Bible must not be taken literally, but should be read allegorically.

"One simply cannot read the Bible as a scientific text, because it's often contradictory," Primack said. "For example, in the Bible, Noah takes two animals and puts them on the Ark. But in a later section, he takes seven pairs of animals. If this is the literal word of God, was God confused when He wrote it?"

Proving God

Science is young. The term "scientist" may not even have been coined until 1833. Ironically, modern physics initially sought to explain the clockwork of God's creation. Geology grew partly out of a search for evidence of Noah's Flood.

Today few scientists seem to think much about religion in their research. Many are reluctant to stray outside their area of expertise and may not feel a need to invoke God in their work.

"Most scientists like to operate in the context of economy," said Brian Greene, a world-renowned physicist and author of The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. "If you don't need an explanatory principle, don't invoke it."

There is, of course, no way to prove religious faith scientifically. And it's hard to envision a test that could tell the difference between a universe created by God and one that appeared without God.

"There's no way that scientists can ever rule out religion, or even have anything significant to say about the abstract idea of a divine creator," Greene said.

Instead, Greene said, science and religion can operate in different realms. "Science is very good at answering the 'how' questions. How did the universe evolve to the form that we see?" he said. "But it is woefully inadequate in addressing the 'why' questions. Why is there a universe at all? These are the meaning questions, which many people think religion is particularly good at dealing with."

But is a clean separation between science and religion possible? Some scientific work, including such hot topics as stem cell research, has moral and religious implications.

"Religion is about ethics, or what you should do, while science is about what's true," Primack said. "Those are different things, but of course what you should do is greatly determined by what's true."

Natural Laws

In a 1997 survey in the science journal Nature, 40 percent of U.S. scientists said they believe in God—not just a creator, but a God to whom one can pray in expectation of an answer. That is the same percentage of scientists who were believers when the survey was taken 80 years earlier.

But the number may have been higher if the question had simply asked about God's existence. While many scientists seem to have no problem with deism—the belief that God set the universe in motion and then walked away—others are more troubled with the concept of an intervening God.

"Every piece of data that we have indicates that the universe operates according to unchanging, immutable laws that don't allow for the whimsy or divine choice to all of a sudden change things in a manner that those laws wouldn't have allowed to happen on their own," Greene said.

Yet recent breakthroughs in chaos theory and quantum mechanics, for example, also suggest that the workings of the universe cannot be predicted with absolute precision.

To many scientists, their discoveries may not be that different from religious revelations. Science advancements may even draw scientists closer to religion.

"Even as science progresses in its reductionist fashion, moving towards deeper, simpler, and more elegant understandings of particles and forces, there will still remain a 'why' at the end as to why the ultimate rules are the way they are," said Ted Sargent, a nanotechnology expert at the University of Toronto.

"This is where many people will find God, and the fact of having a final unanswerable 'why' will not go away, even if the 'why' gets more and more fundamental as we progress," he said.

Brian Greene believes we are taking giant strides toward understanding the deepest laws of the universe. That, he says, has strengthened his belief in the underlying harmony and order of the cosmos.

"The universe is incredibly wondrous, incredibly beautiful, and it fills me with a sense that there is some underlying explanation that we have yet to fully understand," he said. "If someone wants to place the word God on those collections of words, it's OK with me."

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
October 18, 2004

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Thursday, October 14, 2004

Psychologists explore traits, experiences that mark wisdom, transcendence of self

Some pretty smart people are trying to figure out just what wisdom is.

One definition of wisdom, for instance, focuses on its practical side - a mastery of day-to-day life, the ability to make good judgments and grasp limitations.

Another is more abstract, suggesting that wise people see beyond their own affairs to humanity's greater whole.

Psychologists are peering into the many facets of wisdom, trying not only to sort out various ways to define it, but also to answer questions such as whether it is related to spirituality, gender, culture or even childhood experiences.

"In the last 10 to 15 years there's been a lot of interest in wisdom," said developmental psychologist Carolyn Aldwin of Oregon State University. Aldwin helped lead a series of studies known as the Wisdom Project, based at the University of California, Davis.

One clue to comprehending wisdom can come from the sort of people who are widely considered wise, said Linda Kelly of Cal-Davis. Surveys asking for the names of wise people repeatedly turn up spiritual figures such as the Dalai Lama, the pope, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa, Kelly said this summer in Honolulu, at a meeting of the American Psychological Association.

But few studies examine whether spirituality and wisdom are connected, she said.

Spirituality is not the same thing as religiousness, Kelly noted. Spiritual people have been represented as "seekers," she said. They are explorers who create their own sense of truth. And they are not bound by religious tradition in connecting with the sacred, whether it be God, nature, or some other higher power.

By contrast, religious people have been characterized as "dwellers," Kelly said. They are inhabitants of the space created by established religious institutions, and they relate to the sacred through being part of a community of like-minded people.

To test whether religiousness or spirituality could predict practical wisdom, Kelly and her colleagues studied almost 1,000 Cal-Davis alumni, ages 23 to 74, for signs of either trait. The scientists also assessed the subjects' coping skills, and such things as their feelings of mastery over life's events.

As it turned out, feelings of mastery were the best predictor of wisdom - followed by coping skills that involved taking positive actions; advancing age; not attending religious services; and spirituality, which the team found contributed modestly.

"It does appear that there is some sort of relationship between spirituality and practical wisdom," Kelly said. As seekers, spiritual people "tend to search for knowledge, which is similar behavior to those who are described as being wise."

Other research presented in Honolulu supports the idea that women may be more likely to exhibit another factor that appears related to wisdom, a quality known as self-transcendence.

Self-transcendence is the ability to stop being preoccupied with one's own life and instead focus more intensely on others and the whole of humanity, said Patricia Jennings of the University of California, San Francisco.

Several studies have suggested that women are more likely than men to be self-transcendent, said Jennings. She and colleagues from Boston's VA Healthcare System and Fordham University tested that idea in an exclusively aged population.

Some 1,100 older participants - more than two-thirds of them men - gave information about their lives today compared with 10 years ago. The survey measured self-transcendence with statements such as "I am more likely to engage in quiet contemplation," and alienation with statements like "I feel my life has less meaning."

The women (whose average age was 69) indeed tended to be more self-transcendent than the men (average age 73), the study found. Some experts have suggested that women may score higher for self-transcendence because an ability to relate to and feel for others is central to their own identities, Jennings explained.

Other results indicated that men experience self-transcendence differently than women. For instance, to the researchers' surprise, men who were more alienated were also more likely to be self-transcendent.

Scientists are also exploring how wisdom differs across cultures. In Western societies, wisdom seems more directed at logic and pragmatics - that is, how best to achieve the good life, said Thao Le of Cal-Davis. Eastern cultures appear more concerned with transcendent wisdom - with its focus on transforming consciousness, and setting oneself free of objects and beliefs. "It's about personal insight, developing self-knowledge, and even questions of does the self really exist?" Le said.

She evaluated two groups of about 100 subjects each - European Americans and Vietnamese immigrants - for qualities of practical and transcendent wisdom, expecting that the European group would score higher for practical wisdom, and the Vietnamese higher for transcendent wisdom.

She also suspected that people with either type of wisdom would be more likely to have positive personality traits such as openness and values such as benevolence, and less likely to have traits like neuroticism and values centered on power, conformity and security. "Wisdom is really about change and transformation," Le said.

The study found that people with higher levels of openness were more likely to have practical or transcendent wisdom, and that the more people embraced values like conformity and security, the less likely they were to rate highly for practical or transcendent wisdom.

The European Americans scored higher on practical wisdom, but no difference was found between the groups in transcendent wisdom, once education levels were taken into account.

While there are some ethnic differences regarding wisdom, Le concluded, "there seems to be some evidence that it is universal."

Yet psychologists aren't just trying to see where to find wisdom. They hope to trace where wisdom begins. Some researchers, for instance, have explored whether it's rooted in childhood experiences.

Adversity in childhood has consistently been linked to problems in adulthood. But many people who undergo traumatic events at any age find them transformative in a positive way, said Loriena Yancura of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

"So what makes the difference between these two outcomes?" Yancura asked. She and colleagues suspected that childhood adversity with no real support from friends or family would lead to alienation, while adversity with support would foster self-transcendence.

The team studied data on the childhood experiences of almost 600 men ages 57 to 96. Were they ever quarantined for an illness? Did they suffer poverty? Parental divorce? Death of a sibling? Serious illness or injury? Verbal abuse? Whippings?

And, did they get emotional support from parents or grandparents, teachers, siblings or friends?

Six years later, the subjects' levels of self-transcendence and alienation were measured. Was their peace of mind harder to upset than it used to be? Did material things mean less than they once did? Or did the subjects feel lonely, or that life lacked meaning?

The older the men were, the more likely they were to be alienated, Yancura reported, but the more support they received, the less likely they were to be alienated. Also, the more support they had, the more likely they were to be self-transcendent.

In short, childhood adversity by itself doesn't influence wisdom-related psychological growth in late life, Yancura said. And, she added, positive experiences, such as support from others, "had surprisingly long-term effects."

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For more about the psychology of wisdom, see www.prometheus.org.uk/Files/MarchandOnWisdom.PDF

BY KAREN PATTERSON
The Dallas Morning News
Posted on Thu, Oct. 14, 2004
© 2004, The Dallas Morning News.

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Why religion's out and we're loving angels instead

Tap the word "angel" into one internet search engine and you get a massive 22,200,000 hits. For many people angels are a comforting reality.

A survey this week by ITV’s This Morning show hinted that while the number of people actively involved in organised religion has been plummeting for some time, interest in angels is now commonplace.

One in three people in Britain in the survey said that they believed in angels, with one in six claiming they had been helped by one.

But how, in today’s secular world, do people actually define "an angel" - and why do so many people believe in them?

Biblical scholar and Methodist preacher Margaret Barker is an authority on angels. She says: "Angels are the way that human beings perceive the divine [God], but because our minds are limited we are only able to see a limited aspect of the divine. These limited aspects are experiences which are traditionally labelled angels."

While the traditional image of an angel is a winged figure with a beatific smile as featured on untold Christmas cards, Barker, whose book An Extraordinary Gathering of Angels is published this month, says the majority of people who claim to have encountered angels do not actually see anything.

"Most people who say they have an experience of angels do not say it was a visual experience. Many people sense a presence or hear something. A very common thing is to smell a particular flowery sweet perfume.

"People tend to think angels have to be seen because the common way people learn about angels is through paintings, the most common being the angel Gabriel.

"But if you read the original text in Luke [in the Bible] of Gabriel coming to Mary, he does not say that Mary saw Gabriel, the English translation inserts the word ‘saw’. Luke says he came in and she heard him."

Barker has listened to many people recounting their experiences of angels. Barker herself claims to have encountered angels "many times". "I know I’m not writing fiction. In a library, for example, I will write out what I think is the reference for a book I want, and I will write it wrongly [accidentally], but when I go to get the [wrong] book and open it, I find the answer to the question I was looking for."

Barker, a grandmother living in Derbyshire, stands by her beliefs, but she admits doctors might well "put it down to my age".

As to why so many people say they see angels, regardless of whether or not they are religious, Barker’s explanation is simply that, in her view and that of the Church, angels are real. She says: "Just because you don’t believe in something does not mean it is not there."

She adds that people "instinctively" believe because it makes them feel better: "There is a huge sense of insecurity in the world today, which some call freedom, but most people don’t want freedom, they want security. The traditional way to describe security is the guardian angel. Angels are reassuring in an uncertain world."

Traditionally, the religious definition of angels is as messengers of God.

The Rev Charles Robertson, minister at Edinburgh’s Canongate Kirk, gives the Church of Scotland’s view: "We believe in angels as messengers of God for purposes of guiding, guarding and protecting, but not necessarily as the biblical stereotypes, the radiant beings [which people imagine].

"Angels are central in our belief because of the biblical witnesses [such as when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary]."

In An Extraordinary Gathering of Angels, Barker explores the role of angels in religion, particularly Judaism and Christianity, her area of expertise.

But it also looks at non-religious views of angels.

While religious and secular views on angels are likely to continue to differ, both sides seem to agree that the impact of people’s belief itself is the same.

As Ben Williams, Edinburgh-based psychologist, says: "I can’t say whether angels exist or not, or what they are.

"But believing in angels gives people a feeling of security that there is something out there that is more powerful than they are, and benevolent."

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Friday, October 08, 2004

Kenyan environmentalist wins Nobel Peace Prize

Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai has become the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, honoured for aiding democracy and seeking to save the continent's shrinking forests.

"It cannot get any better than this -- maybe in heaven," Maathai told Reuters after learning of the award. She wept with delight and planted a tree in her home town of Nyeri in the shadow of Mount Kenya, Africa's second highest peak.

The award marks a new environmental theme in interpreting the 1895 will of Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel. Until now it has often gone to people seeking to end armed conflicts.

"Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment," said Ole Danbolt Mjoes, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The prize is worth 10 million Swedish crowns (761,700 pounds) and will be handed out in Oslo on December 10.

"We have emphasised the environment, democracy building and human rights and especially women's rights," Mjoes said of the prize. "We have added a new dimension to the concept of peace."

Maathai's Green Belt Movement, comprised mainly of women, says it has planted 30 million trees across Africa to combat creeping deforestation that often deepens poverty.

Mjoes said the movement also worked for family planning, nutrition and a fight against corruption in Kenya. And Maathai said that her grassroots movement could be a pre-emptive strike to safeguard peace.

"Many wars in the world are actually fought over natural resources," she told NRK Norwegian radio. "In managing our resources ... we plant the seeds of peace, both now and in the future."

Tree plantings slow desertification, preserve forest habitats for wildlife and provide a source of fuel, building materials and food for future generations.

"Understanding is growing throughout the world of the close links between environmental protection and global security," said Klaus Toepfer, head of the U.N. Environment Programme, in hailing the award.

And trees soak up carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed for global warming. Many environmental experts say global warming could be the biggest threat to life on the planet, with more deserts, storms and rising sea levels.

Maathai, born in 1940, is a zoology professor who rose to international fame for campaigns against government-backed forest clearances in Kenya in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Experts estimate British colonialists and Kenyan farmers have cleared about 75 percent of woodlands in the last 150 years, leaving two percent of Kenya's land under forest cover.

In 1989 Maathai's protests forced then President Daniel arap Moi to abandon a personal plan to erect a 62-storey office tower in a Nairobi park. In 1999 she was beaten and whipped by private security guards during a demonstration against the sale of forest land near the capital Nairobi.

In 2001, the 100th anniversary of the first award, the committee mapped out possible new themes for peace.

Geir Lundestad, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, said at the time that the award might shift in its second century to honour new types of activists such as environmentalists, rock stars, perhaps even journalists.

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Thursday, October 07, 2004

Foundation rewards quest to link spirituality, science

The John Templeton Foundation's signature product is the world's largest cash prize for an individual - roughly $1 million, given since 1973 to someone judged to have worked toward common ground between science and religion, subjects that many doubt can ever have a close relation. By design, it is intended to be richer than the Nobel Prizes; awarded in English pounds, the precise amount fluctuates annually.

The intended significance of the prize, officially the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities, is shown both by its big-dollar amount and the scope of the work it recognizes.

The earliest winners often came from fairly conventional humanitarian or theological fields. Mother Teresa won the first, and the Rev. Billy Graham, the Christian evangelist, won in 1982.

But the last five winners have been noted scientists or philosophers. Laureates have included two Buddhists, a Muslim, and at least one somewhat surprised scientist - nominated by others - who described himself as agnostic.

The most recent recipient, announced in March, was George F.R. Ellis, a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He lectures in cosmology - the study of the nature of the universe and how it began - physics and astronomy.

Ellis is also a Quaker and was heavily involved in social activism during the era of apartheid.

He was recognized for his life work in science and his personal religious commitment. Like all winners, he was selected by nine international judges, drawn from scientific or religious fields.

Templeton said at the announcement that Ellis' work showed "understanding of the reality of love in our lives and, indeed, in all of existence."

John Templeton Jr., who is 64, is usually known as Jack. His father, who is 91, a naturalized British subject and a resident of the Bahamas, has been knighted for his philanthropy and is known as Sir John.

A pioneer in the mutual-funds industry, Sir John sold his Templeton funds group in 1992 for $1 billion. He endowed the foundation with half that amount.

Today, according to foundation vice president Pamela P. Thompson, Sir John's net worth is about $2 billion. The foundation's endowment is $850 million.

That will make possible $40 million in grants this year, she said, up from $15 million just a few years ago.

The foundation makes some grants in nonspiritual fields, promoting free enterprise and "character development." It sponsors the "Laws of Life" essay contest in about 150 U.S. high schools.

But about three-quarters of its grants are for research and publication in science and religion, Sir John's true passion.

He believes that spirituality, theology and religion can make the same sort of progress that medicine, science and cosmology have in the last 300 years.

"Spiritual progress may be more important than all of these other areas," Jack Templeton said in March.

He said many people have found it hard to grasp the concept of spiritual discoveries.

"One of the engines for progress is research, including the scientific method," he said, and the foundation aims to encourage that kind of research.

Jack Templeton said he was sure that research and new knowledge could yield spiritual progress.

"Four hundred years ago, people called theology the queen of the sciences," he said. "It would be a bad mistake to say that you cannot make discoveries in the immaterial."

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Senior Citizen Life Lessons Sought for Website

Want to share your senior citizen wisdom with the world? People 60 or older are being sought by gerontologists at Cornell University to share what life has taught them on a new Website and, maybe, in a book.

"We're looking for people from across the country who will describe things they feel they have learned over the course of their lives," says Karl Pillemer, director of the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging (CITRA). Pillemer and Myra Sabir, a post-doctoral associate at Cornell, have established a Web site on which people 60 and older can pass on the wisdom they've gained over the years.

Specifically, they are looking for answers to the questions:

> What are the most important lessons you have learned?

> If you wanted to give younger generations (for example, grandchildren) advice about life, what would that be?

> What's your prescription for "the good life" and how to live it?

These lessons can be in any area of life: work, family, spirituality, health, marriage, etc. Respondents are invited to provide as much or as little detail as they like and are welcome to remain anonymous.

Pillemer and Sabir plan to review and summarize the responses to shed light on the kinds of wisdom people would like to pass on to future generations. They also expect to post selected responses on their Web site and publish them in book form.

Responses can be submitted online at http://www.citra.org/survey.php or e-mailed to lifelessons-mailbox@cornell.edu.

CITRA is a unique collaboration of social science, clinical- and mental-health researchers. It unites researchers from Cornell's Ithaca campus, research clinicians in geriatric medicine at the Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell in Manhattan, and psychiatric researchers at Cornell's Psychiatric Division of the Cornell Institute for Geriatric Psychiatry in Westchester, N.Y.

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Readers Seek More Religion Amid Uncertain Times

Feeling adrift in an increasingly confusing world? Then join a growing trend among bookworms -- pick up a tome on religion or spirituality.

Books, whether on Islam, Christianity or Judaism, have become the biggest growth genre in the publishing industry fueled by greater geopolitical uncertainty, curiosity in Islam and an interest in fiction with a religious undercurrent.

In the United States, the world's largest market for consumer books, religion book sales grew by 50 percent last year from 2002, far outpacing other categories to account for about 17 percent of consumer book spending.

A lot of the growth is attributable to Rick Warren's "The Purpose-Driven Life," which says that every life has a divine purpose and offers a 40-day path for Christian devotion to God. It has sold 20 million copies in English, 1 million in Spanish and is published in more than 40 languages.

"...I think the success of the book and the broader religion market is because people are more open to a spiritual exploration of life than they have been in years," said Stanley Gundry, senior vice president and editor in chief of the book's publisher Zondervan, in an interview at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Greater access to books about religion has also helped boost sales, with shops devoting more space to the genre. Christian publishers, which in the past relied on specialized sellers, now say about half their sales come from mainstream spots like Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

Readers have sought answers about Middle Eastern culture since the 2001 attacks on the United States.

"Certainly the Sept. 11 attacks spurred a big interest in books about Islam," said Samuel G. Freedman, "What I think is driving the upsurge is that America is in the midst of one of its periodic great awakenings," Freedman said. "The growing confidence and sophistication of evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews are part of this."

Though conventional wisdom says rising religion and spirituality book sales to the huge population of baby boomers, a recent survey of 10,000 consumers by trade magazine Publishers Weekly found that 45 percent were under the age of 35.

People are a little adrift and not quite sure they know what's going on factually around the world, and maybe that drives a little more spirituality," said Patricia Schroeder, president of the U.S. trade organization for publishers.

Though fiction is not included in religion book sales data, some analysts said it inspired readers to read non-fiction books on the subject.