Human holiness as religious apologia

From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century)

BACKGROUND The relationship between spirituality, religion and medicine has been recognized since antiquity. Despite large differences in their history, society, economy and cultures human communities shared a common belief that spirituality and religion played an important role in the healing of diseases. METHODS The study of religious remedies used by Italian folk medicine in order to treat...

Holiness and Responsibility

English as well as French differentiates the term holy from the term sacred – in fact, Levinas' book "Du sacré au saint" is translated as "From the Sacred to the Holy". This is illustrative of the extent to which the meanings of the two words differ. God is called "The Holy One Blessed be He", but we would find it peculiar to refer to Him as "The Sacred One". By contrast, when referring to plac...

Recovery from "brain death": a neurologist's apologia.

Religious Concepts as Necessary Components of the Adaptive Religious System

The majority view of cognitive scientists of religion holds that religious concepts are merely byproducts of evolved minds. However, religious concepts exhibit patterned socioecological variation, suggesting that they may be responsive to local selective pressures. Concepts worthy of religious devotion are intriguing, emotion-triggering, and framed in such a way that makes them relevant to one’...

Religious belief as compensatory control.

The authors review experimental evidence that religious conviction can be a defensive source of compensatory control when personal or external sources of control are low. They show evidence that (a) belief in religious deities and secular institutions can serve as external forms of control that can compensate for manipulations that lower personal control and (b) religious conviction can also se...