"natural theology > notes > 1999

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Barks, Coleman, Rumi: Bridge to the Soul; Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart, HarperOne 2007 Amazon Product Description '2007 is the "Year of Rumi," and who better than Coleman Barks, Rumi's unlikely, supremely passionate ambassador, to mark the milestone of this great poet's 800th birthday? Barks, who was recently awarded an honorary doctorate in Persian language and literature by the University of Tehran for his thirty years of translating Rumi, has collected and translated ninety new poems, most of them never published before in any form. The result is this beautiful edition titled Rumi: Bridge to the Soul. The "bridge" in the title is a reference to the Khajou Bridge in Isphahan, Iran, which Barks visited with Robert Bly in May of 2006—a trip that in many ways prompted this book. The "soul bridge" also suggests Rumi himself, who crosses cultures and religions and brings us all together to listen to his words, regardless of origin or creed. Open this book and let Rumi's poetry carry you into the interior silence and joy of the spirit, the place that unites conscious knowing with a deeper, more soulful understanding.'
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Cox, Harvey, The Future of Faith, HarperOne 2009 Amazon editorial review from Publishers Weekly Starred Review. What shape will the Christian faith take in the 21st century? In the midst of fast-paced global changes and in the face of an apparent resurgence of fundamentalism, can Christianity survive as a living and vital faith? With his typical brilliance and lively insight, Cox explores these and other questions in a dazzling blend of memoir, church history and theological commentary. He divides Christian history into three periods: the Age of Faith, during the first Christian centuries, when the earliest followers of Jesus lived in his Spirit, embraced his hope and followed him in the work he had begun; the Age of Belief, from the Council of Nicaea to the late 20th century, during which the church replaced faith in Jesus with dogma about him; and the Age of the Spirit, in which we're now living, in which Christians are rediscovering the awe and wonder of faith in the tremendous mystery of God. According to Cox, the return to the Spirit that so enlivened the Age of Faith is now enlivening a global Christianity, through movements like Pentecostalism and liberation theology, yearning for the dawning of God's reign of shalom. Cox remains our most thoughtful commentator on the religious scene, and his spirited portrait of our religious landscape challenges us to think in new ways about faith.' Copyright © Reed Business Information
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Cummins, Denise Dellarosa, and Colin Allen (editors), The Evolution of Mind, Oxford University Press 1998 Introduction: 'This book is an interdisciplinary endeavour, a collection of essays by ethologists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers united in the common goal of explaining cognition. . . . the chief challenge is to make evolutionary psychology into an experimental science. Several of the chapters in this volume describe experimental techniques and results consistent with this aim; our hope and intention is that they lead by example in the development of evolutionary psychology from the realm of speculation to that of established research program'
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Debray, Regis, God, An Itinerary, Verso 2004 Amazon Product Description 'God, who has changed the lives—and deaths—of men and women, has in turn changed His face and His meaning several times over since His birth three thousand years ago. He may have kept the same name throughout, but God has been addressed in many different ways and cannot be said to have the same characteristics in the year 500 BC as in AD 400 or in the twenty-first century, nor is He the same entity in Jerusalem or Constantinople as in Rome or New York. The omnipotent and punitive God of the Hebrews is not the consoling and intimate God of the Christians, and is certainly not identical with the impersonal cosmic Energy of the New Agers.

Régis Debray's purpose in this major new book is to trace the episodes of the genesis of God, His itinerary and the costs of His survival. Debray shifts the spotlight away from the theological foreground and moves it backstage to the machinery of divine production by going back, from the Law, to the Tablets themselves and by scrutinizing Heaven at its most down-to-earth. Throughout this beautifully illustrated book, he is able to focus his attention not just on what was written, but on how it was written: with what tools, on what surface, for what social purpose and in what physical environment. Debray contends that, in order to discover how God's fire was transferred from the desert to the prairie, we ought first to bracket the philosophical questions and focus on empirical information. However, he claims that this does not lessen its significance, but rather gives new life to spiritual issues. God: An Itinerary uses the histories of the Eternal and of the West to illuminate one another and to throw light on contemporary civilization itself. 50 b/w illustrations.'
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Hobson, M P, and G. P. Efstathiou, A. N. Lasenby, General Relativity: An Introduction for Physicists, Cambridge University Press 2006 Amazon Editorial Reviews Book Description 'After reviewing the basic concept of general relativity, this introduction discusses its mathematical background, including the necessary tools of tensor calculus and differential geometry. These tools are used to develop the topic of special relativity and to discuss electromagnetism in Minkowski spacetime. Gravitation as spacetime curvature is introduced and the field equations of general relativity derived. After applying the theory to a wide range of physical situations, the book concludes with a brief discussion of classical field theory and the derivation of general relativity from a variational principle.'
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Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, with a translation, critical and exegetical notes, prologomena and copious indexes: Volume 1. Confucian Analects, the Great Learning and the Docrine of the Mean, Adamant Media Corporation 2000 'This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1893 edition by the Clarendon Press, Oxford. Second edition, revised'
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Niven, David, Niven: The Moon's a Balloon. Bring on the Empty Horses, Hodder & Stoughton General Division 1986
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Peacock, John A, Cosmological Physics, Cambridge University Press 1999 Nature Book Review: 'The intermingling of observational detail and fundamental theory has made cosmology an exceptionally rich, exciting and controversial science. Students in the field — whether observers or particle theorists — are expected to be acquainted with matters ranging from the Supernova Ia distance scale, Big Bang nucleosynthesis theory, scale-free quantum fluctuations during inflation, the galaxy two-point correlation function, particle theory candidates for the dark matter, and the star formation history of the Universe. Several general science books, conference proceedings and specialized monographs have addressed these issues. Peacock's Cosmological Physics ambitiously fills the void for introducing students with a strong undergraduate background in physics to the entire world of current physical cosmology. The majestic sweep of his discussion of this vast terrain is awesome, and is bound to capture the imagination of most students.' Ray Carlberg, Nature 399:322
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Prothero, Stephen, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World - and Why Their Differences Matter, HarperOne 2010 'Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Stephen Prothero 'On my last visit to Jerusalem, I struck up a conversation with an elderly man in the Muslim Quarter. As a shopkeeper, he seemed keen to sell me jewelry. As a Sufi mystic, he seemed even keener to engage me in matters of the spirit. He told me that religions are human inventions, so we must avoid the temptation of worshipping Islam rather than Allah. What matters is opening yourself up to the mystery that goes by the word God, and that can be done in any religion. As he tempted me with more turquoise and silver, he asked me what I was doing in Jerusalem. When I told him I was researching a book on the world’s religions, he put down the jewelry, looked at me intently, and, placing a finger on my chest for emphasis, said, "Do not write false things about the religions." As I wrote God is Is Not One, I came back repeatedly to this conversation. I never wavered from trying to write true things, but I knew that some of the things I was writing he would consider false. Mystics often claim that the great religions differ only in the inessentials. They may be different paths but they are ascending the same mountain and they converge at the peak. Throughout this book I give voice to these mystics: the Daoist sage Laozi, who wrote his classic the Daodejing just before disappearing forever into the mountains; the Sufi poet Rumi, who instructs us to "gamble everything for love"; and the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, who revels in the feminine aspects of God. But my focus is not on these spiritual superstars. It is on ordinary religious folk—the stories they tell, the doctrines they affirm, and the rituals they practice. And these stories, doctrines, and rituals could not be more different. Christians do not go on the hajj to Mecca; Jews do not affirm the doctrine of the Trinity; and neither Buddhists nor Hindus trouble themselves about sin or salvation. Of course, religious differences trouble us, since they seem to portend, if not war itself, then at least rumors thereof. But as I researched and wrote this book I came to appreciate how opening our eyes to religious differences can help us appreciate the unique beauty of each of the great religions--the radical freedom of the Daoist wanderer, the contemplative way into death of the Buddhist monk, and the joy in the face of the divine life of the Sufi shopkeeper. I plan to send my Sufi shopkeeper a copy of this book. I have no doubt he will disagree with parts of it. But I hope he will recognize my effort to avoid writing "false things," even when I disagree with friends.'
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Russell, Bertrand, A History of Western Philosophy, and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from Earliest Times to the Present Day, Simon & Schuster 1945 Amazon ditorial reviews: Ray Monk: 'A History of Western Philosophy remains unchallenged as the perfect introduction to its subject. Russell . . . writes with the kind of verve, freshness and personal engagement that lesser spirits would never have permitted themselves. This boldness, together with the astonishing breadth of his general historical knowledge, allows him to put philosophers into their social and cultural context . . . The result is exactly the kind of philosophy that most people would like to read, but which only Russell could possibly have written.'
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Safi, Omid, Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism, Oneworld Publications 2003 Amazon editorial review From Publishers Weekly 'Safi, a Colgate University professor, assembles a diverse set of essays by and about "progressive" Muslims. The essays vary in topic and in effectiveness, but generally seek to challenge the images of Islam held by both xenophobic Westerners and extremist Muslims. Safi's introduction, though showing insight into many problems today's Muslims face but rarely discuss publicly, is clunky, citing sources from Gandhi to Bob Dylan. Part I offers hard-hitting essays that are sure to be controversial in their discussion of what scholar Tazim Kassam claims is a "curtailment... of civil liberties such as freedom of inquiry and the expression of dissenting opinions" in the U.S. after September 11. There are also some triumphant essays. Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle superbly analyzes Islam's categorization of homosexuality as a sin in an essay that is long overdue and probably the only scholarly work of its kind. Gwendolyn Simmons's piece demands the establishment of feminism as Islamic in a touching essay-cum-memoir that connects her growth as a Muslim female to her experience as a young African-American during the Civil Rights era. The incomparable Amina Wadud offers an excellent article on racial tensions between immigrant and indigenous Muslims, while Marcia Hermansen pens the volume's bravest and most honest contribution, addressing the increasing conservatism of her American Muslim students-a topic previously not discussed outside the Muslim community. This collection is recommended for those who yearn for realistic information about Muslims, and for Muslims who are disgruntled with current Islamic leadership.' Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Smart, Ninian, Dimensions of the Sacred - An Anatomy of the World's beliefs, University of California Press 1999 Amazon editorial review: From Publishers Weekly 'Smart, one of the grandfathers of the study of the history of religion (along with Huston Smith and Mircea Eliade), offers a very interesting treatise on how the human animal has attempted to impose meaning on the paradox of the human condition: we are finite and time-bound, yet we are able to conceive of the eternal and the infinite. Smart walks the reader through a great mass of research, and for that alone we should be grateful. Through a series of chapters devoted to six dimensions of the world?Ritual, Mythic, Experiential and Emotional, Ethical and Legal, Social, Material?Smart delineates characteristics of religious worldviews. Two chapters, one on Doctrine and Philosophy and a final one on the Political Effects of Religion, provide bookends for his discussions. On the whole, Smart provides an extremely useful scheme for understanding the interrelationship among the various worldviews. A kind of anatomy of spirituality, designed to advance understanding of the practical and theoretical aspects of a variety of world religions, Smart's book is important reading for any serious student of religion.' Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Smith, Huston, The World's Religions, HarperOne 2009 Amazon product description: 'Huston Smith's masterpiece explores the essential elements and teachings of the world's predominant faiths, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the native traditions of Australia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Emphasizing the inner—rather than the institutional—dimension of these religions, Smith devotes special attention to Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, and the teachings of Jesus. He convincingly conveys the unique appeal and gifts of each of the traditions and reveals their hold on the human heart and imagination.'
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Smith, Wilfred Cantwell Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History, Princeton University Press 1977
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Links

Adi Shankara - Wikipedia, Adi Shankara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Adi Shankara (788 CE - 821 CE?), also known as Śaṅkara Bhagavatpādācārya and Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, was an Indian philosopher who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, a sub-school of Vedanta.

His works in Sanskrit, all of which are extant today, concern themselves with establishing the doctrine of Advaita (Nondualism). He also established the importance of monastic life as sanctioned in the Upanishads and Brahma Sutra, in a time when the Mimamsa school established strict ritualism and ridiculed monasticism.' back

Albert Einstein, Thermodynamics - Wikiquote, 'A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression that classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown, within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts. Albert Einstein (author), Paul Arthur, Schilpp (editor). Autobiographical Notes. A Centennial Edition. Open Court Publishing Company. 1979. p. 31 [As quoted by Don Howard, John Stachel. Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879-1909 (Einstein Studies, vol. 8). Birkhäuser Boston. 2000. p. 1]' back

Asuza Street Revival - Wikipedia, Asuza Street Revival - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Azusa Street Revival was an historic Pentecostal revival meeting that took place in Los Angeles, California, and was led by William J. Seymour, an African American preacher. It began with a meeting on April 14, 1906, and continued until roughly 1915. The revival was characterized by ecstatic spiritual experiences accompanied by speaking in tongues, dramatic worship services, and inter-racial mingling. The participants received criticism from secular media and Christian theologians for behaviors considered to be outrageous and unorthodox, especially at the time. Today, the revival is considered by historians to be the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the 20th century.' back

Axial Age - Wikipedia, Axial Age - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term the axial age (Ger. Achsenzeit, "axistime") to describe the period from 800 BCE to 200 BCE, during which, according to Jaspers, similar revolutionary thinking appeared in China, India and the Occident. The period is also sometimes referred to as the axis age.

Jaspers, in his Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History), identified a number of key axial age thinkers as having had a profound influence on future philosophy and religion, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged. Jaspers saw in these developments in religion and philosophy a striking parallel without any obvious direct transmission of ideas from one region to the other, having found no recorded proof of any extensive intercommunication between Ancient Greece, the Middle East, India, and China. Jaspers held up this age as unique, and one to which the rest of the history of human thought might be compared. Jaspers' approach to the culture of the middle of the first millennium BC has been adopted by other scholars and academics, and has become a point of discussion in the history of religion.' back

East-West Schism - Wikipedia, East-West Schism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The East–West Schism, sometimes known as the Great Schism, divided medieval Christianity into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches, which later became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, respectively. Relations between East and West had long been embittered by political and ecclesiastical differences and theological disputes. Prominent among these were the issues of "filioque", whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used in the eucharist, the Pope's claim to universal jurisdiction, and the place of Constantinople in relation to the Pentarchy.' back

Isaiah Berlin, Positive versus Negative Liberty, From Two Concepts of Liberty, a lecture delivered in 1958 at Oxford University] 'One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals -- justice or progress or the happiness of future generations, or the sacred mission of emancipation of a nation or race or class, or even liberty itself, which demands the sacrifice of individuals for the freedom of society. This is the belief that somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution.' back

Islam - Wikipedia, Islam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Islam (Arabic: الإسلام‎ al-’islām, pronounced [ʔislæːm] ( listen)[note 1]) is the monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God (Arabic: الله‎, Allāh), and by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad's teachings and normative example (which is called the Sunnah in Arabic, and demonstrated in collections of Hadith). Islam literally means "submission (to God)." back

John Paul II, Truth Cannot Contradict Truth, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences October 22, 1996 , 'Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being.' back

Martin Luther - Wikipedia, Martin Luther - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Martin Luther (10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation.He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. His refusal to retract all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Emperor.' back

Prosperity theology - Wikipedia, Prosperity theology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Prosperity theology (also known as prosperity doctrine, the health and wealth gospel, or the prosperity gospel) is a religious belief found among "tens of millions"[1] of Christians centered on the notion that God provides material prosperity for those he favors. It has been defined by the belief that "Jesus blesses believers with riches" or more specifically as the teaching that "believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the 'sowing of seeds' through the faithful payments of tithes and offerings." In the words of journalist Hanna Rosin, the prosperity gospel "is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of intensity."[1][2] It arose in the United States after World War II championed by Oral Roberts and became particularly popular in the decade of the 1990s.[1] More recently, the theology has been exported to less prosperous areas of the world, with mixed results.' back

Protestant Reformation - Wikipedia, Protestant Reformation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to ("protested") the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led to the creation of new national Protestant churches. The Reformation was precipitated by earlier events within Europe, such as the Black Death and the Western Schism, which eroded people's faith in the Roman Catholic Church. This, as well as many other factors, contributed to the growth of lay criticism in the church and the creation of Protestantism.' back

S-L-M - Wikipedia, S-L-M - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Shin-Lamedh-Mem (Arabic: س ل م‎ S-L-M; Hebrew: שלם‎ Š-L-M; Maltese: S-L-M) is the triconsonantal root of many Semitic words, and many of those words are used as names. The root itself translates as "whole, safe, intact"' back

Solemn vow - Wikipedia, Solemn vow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In Roman Catholic canon law, a solemn vow is a vow ("a deliberate and free promise made to God about a possible and better good") that the Church has recognized as such.

Any other vow, public or private, individual or collective, concerned with an action or with abstaining from an action, is a simple vow.

In canon law a vow is public (concerning the Church itself directly) only if a legitimate superior accepts it in the name of the Church; all other vows, no matter how much publicity is given to them, are classified as private vows (concerning directly only those who make them). The vow taken at profession as a member of any religious institute is a public vow, but in recent centuries can be either solemn or simple.' back

Sweet spot - Wikipedia, Sweet spot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A sweet spot is a place, often numerical as opposed to physical, where a combination of factors suggest a particularly suitable solution. In the context of a racquet, bat or similar sporting instrument, sweet spot is often believed to be the same as the center of percussion.' back

The Brights' Network, The Brights' Net - Home Page, 'What is a bright?

A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview

A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements

The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview' back

The JESUS Film Project, The JESUS Film Project, 'Called by some "one of the best-kept secrets in Christian missions," a number of mission experts have acclaimed the film as one of the greatest evangelistic tools of all time. Since 1979 the "JESUS" film has been viewed by several billion people all across the globe, and has resulted in more than 225 million men, women and children indicating decisions to follow Jesus.' back

William Blake, All Religions are One (1788 A): electronic edition, 'Through aphoristic declarations and accompanying emblem-like designs, Blake argues for the essential unity of all religions as expressions of the "Poetic Genius" within all human beings. As the quoted phrase suggests, All Religions are One implies the unity of the artistic and religious imagination. Several of the numbered "Principle[s]," the term used as a heading to each text plate, assert a causal connection between inner spirit and outer body. Because of shared graphic styles, themes, and genre, All Religions are One is closely associated with There is No Natural Religion of the same year.' back

Yoido Full Gospel Church - Wikipedia, Yoido Full Gospel Church - Wikipedia, 'Yoido Full Gospel Church is a Pentecostal church on Yeouido Island in Seoul, South Korea. With about 1,000,000 members (2007), it is the largest Protestant Christian congregation in South Korea, [1] and in the whole world. Founded and led by David Yonggi Cho since 1958, it is one of the most internationally visible manifestations of Korean Christianity.' back

vol VII: Notes

1999

Notes

Sunday 18 July 1999

Monday 19 July 1999

Tuesday 20 July 1999

Wednesday 21 July 1999

Thursday 22 July 1999

Friday 23 July 1999

Saturday 24 July 1999

Further reading

Books

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