OBJECTIVE To track within-individual change during late life in the sense of personal control and God-mediated control (the belief that one can work collaboratively with God to achieve one's goals and exercise control over life events) and to evaluate the hypothesis that this element of religion is related to declining personal control. METHOD A longitudinal survey representative of older Whi...

Historically, the development of God concepts in human cognition has been explained anthropomorphically. In other words, for children especially, God is a big, superhuman who lives in the sky. Recent empirical research on the development of these concepts may suggest an alternative hypothesis. In this paper, we review this research and outline the "preparedness hypothesis," which suggests that ...

ho was Hermes? The great 19th century German mythographer, W.H.Roscher, identified Hermes as the wind, subsuming under this basic identity all of his other roles and attributes Hermes as servant and messenger of the sky god Zeus, Hermes as swift and winged, Hermes as thief and bandit, Hermes as inventor of the pipes and lyre, Hermes as guide of souls and as god of dreams and sleep, Hermes as pr...

In this article I argue that the effects of sin for our cognition of God primarily consist in a lack of knowledge by acquaintance of God and the relevant ensuing propositional knowledge. In the course of my argument, I make several conceptual distinctions and offer analyses of 1 Cor 13:9–12 and Rom 1:18–23. As it turns out, we have ample reason to think that sin has had and still has profound c...

Scientists call pasture a natural eco-system and range is an agricultural eco-system. In this point of view although pasture that was full of plants growing by itself and not growing by human being (Pirdashti, 2007; Mohgadam, 2005) and two groups of living beings such as human being, plants, domesticated, and not living being like weather, Wind, gradient which are effective in making of pasture...

the proofs of god's existence are among the main questions of philosophers. this question has a special importance in spinoza's works, because it constitutes the basis of his philosophy. in his main work, ethics, he initiates the discussion with the definition of god and ends it up with man's noblest happiness, namely love of god. he deals with the issue in his different works an...

aim and background: the concept of god concept is transferred to individuals by means of cultural and theological media. it is a conceptual understanding of people about the attributes of god and is closely associated with their mental health. the aim of the current study was to predict symptoms based on the concept of god in iranian medical students. methods and materials: in this correlationa...

[ABSTRACT] Some argue that God’s omnipotence and moral perfection prevent God from being afraid and having evil desires and thus from understanding such states—which contradicts God’s omniscience. But, I argue, God could acquire such understanding indirectly, either by (i) perceiving the mental states of imperfect creatures, (ii) imaginatively combining the components of mental states with whic...