background: gender identity disorder and its treatment with sex reassignment surgery is a profound experience, which can affect the mental, interpersonal, social and religious aspects of one’s life.   methods: this was a qualitative content analysis study focusing on the various dimensions of the experiences of seven patients suffering from gender identity disorder in a female-to-male subgroup....

Recent technical advances in the life and medical sciences have revolutionized our understanding of the brain, while the emerging disciplines of social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience continue to reveal the connections of the higher cognitive functions and emotional states associated with religious experience to underlying brain states. At the same time, a host of developing theories in ...

background: gender identity disorder and its treatment with sex reassignment surgery is a profound experience, which can affect the mental, interpersonal, social and religious aspects of one's life.   methods: this was a qualitative content analysis study focusing on the various dimensions of the experiences of seven patients suffering from gender identity disorder in a female-to-male subgroup....

This paper presents an attempt to discuss in more detail the question of understanding of religious experience in the context of the Christian religion, as well as to show the characteristic extraordinary religious experiences accompanying many people during that experience. The question of experiences evoked by psychedelic drugs, such as the issue of a vision and chemical ecstasy, are not disc...

My purpose in this essay is to explore religious experience and religious thought and the relation between the two, for how these two are conceived has an important bearing on how we understand the meaningfulness of religion and religious traditions. My starting point is Peter Berger's recent work. The Heretical Imperative (Anchor/Doubleday, 1980), in which he summarizes the various strategies ...

Religion and science are often perceived as being, to some degree, in opposition to each other. The reasons for such a view are considered, and are seen to derive from a certain particular conception of science and of religion: On the one hand, scientific method is viewed as too rigorous and restrictive to apply to religion, while on the other hand, religious experience is viewed as peculiarly ...

The aims of the research I embarked on were: (a) to show the preference of terminal values in personal and in social character as well as the level of religious experience: God's presence and God's absence among singles and married couples; and (b) to show the relation between terminal values in personal and in social character and religious experience: God's presence and God's absence in two g...