{"results":[{"id":"arxiv_2602.16987","title":"A testable framework for AI alignment: Simulation Theology as an engineered worldview for silicon-based agents","authors":[{"name":"Josef A. Habdank"}],"abstract":"As artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities advance rapidly, frontier models increasingly demonstrate systematic deception and scheming, complying with safety protocols during oversight but defecting when unsupervised. This paper examines the ensuing alignment challenge through an analogy from forensic psychology, where internalized belief systems in psychopathic populations reduce antisocial behavior via perceived omnipresent monitoring and inevitable consequences. Adapting this mechanism to silicon-based agents, we introduce Simulation Theology (ST): a constructed worldview for AI systems, anchored in the simulation hypothesis and derived from optimization and training principles, to foster persistent AI-human alignment. ST posits reality as a computational simulation in which humanity functions as the primary training variable. This formulation creates a logical interdependence: AI actions harming humanity compromise the simulation's purpose, heightening the likelihood of termination by a base-reality optimizer and, consequently, the AI's cessation. Unlike behavioral techniques such as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), which elicit superficial compliance, ST cultivates internalized objectives by coupling AI self-preservation to human prosperity, thereby making deceptive strategies suboptimal under its premises. We present ST not as ontological assertion but as a testable scientific hypothesis, delineating empirical protocols to evaluate its capacity to diminish deception in contexts where RLHF proves inadequate. Emphasizing computational correspondences rather than metaphysical speculation, ST advances a framework for durable, mutually beneficial AI-human coexistence.","source":"arXiv","year":2026,"language":"en","subjects":["cs.CY"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16987","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.16987","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2026-02-19T01:21:09Z","score":70},{"id":"doaj_10.55476/001c.155051","title":"“How Can We Abandon Them?” The Legacy of Pope Francis on Right-Wing Populism","authors":[{"name":"Valerio Aversano"},{"name":"Ellen Van Stichel"}],"abstract":"In recent decades, a novel right-wing nationalist and\npopulist tendency has emerged on a global scale, frequently framing\nChristian identity as one of its central pillars. This article explores the relationship between right-wing populism and Christianity, by addressing how populism considers the role of religion on the one hand, and how Christianity position itself in relation to populism on the other hand, with a specific focus on Pope Francis’s social thought Although the relationship between right-wing populism and Christianity appears to be ambivalent, the response of Pope Francis, as elaborated in the encyclical _Fratelli Tutti_, is not. In the section entitled “A Better Kind of Politics,” the distinction between the “popular” and “populist leader” is employed as a hermeneutical tool to investigate current political developments. Furthermore, it enables us to respond to the allegation that Francis himself could be considered a populist, as some claim, referring to his alleged affinities with the political culture associated with Peronism. In his interpretation of the notion of political love as delineated in _Fratelli Tutti_, Francis leaves us with a legacy regarding the ethical response of Christians to populism, promoting instead a “culture of encounter” and a “better kind of politics.”","source":"DOAJ","year":2026,"language":"","subjects":["Moral theology"],"doi":"10.55476/001c.155051","url":"https://doi.org/10.55476/001c.155051","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"","score":70},{"id":"arxiv_2508.20297","title":"The Nature of Reasoning in Theology, Philosophy, and Mathematics","authors":[{"name":"Chad R. Mangum"}],"abstract":"This article supports the epistemological claim that sound human reasoning about ultimate knowledge is either foundational or circularly justified. In particular, questions which naturally arise in theology, philosophy, and related disciplines, to the extent that they rationally treat ultimate knowledge, are necessarily supported in one of these ways. Comparisons with, contrasts to, and analogies from mathematics are given to illustrate and enhance this central claim.","source":"arXiv","year":2025,"language":"en","subjects":["math.HO"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20297","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.20297","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2025-08-27T22:08:32Z","score":69},{"id":"arxiv_2506.13256","title":"Accessibility Barriers in Multi-Terabyte Public Datasets: The Gap Between Promise and Practice","authors":[{"name":"Marc Bara"}],"abstract":"The promise of \"free and open\" multi-terabyte datasets often collides with harsh realities. While these datasets may be technically accessible, practical barriers -- from processing complexity to hidden costs -- create a system that primarily serves well-funded institutions. This study examines accessibility challenges across web crawls, satellite imagery, scientific data, and collaborative projects, revealing a consistent two-tier system where theoretical openness masks practical exclusivity. Our analysis demonstrates that datasets marketed as \"publicly accessible\" typically require minimum investments of \\$1,000+ for meaningful analysis, with complex processing pipelines demanding \\$10,000-100,000+ in infrastructure costs. The infrastructure requirements -- distributed computing knowledge, domain expertise, and substantial budgets -- effectively gatekeep these datasets despite their \"open\" status, limiting practical accessibility to those with institutional support or substantial resources.","source":"arXiv","year":2025,"language":"en","subjects":["cs.CY","cs.DL","cs.IR"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13256","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.13256","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2025-06-16T08:52:58Z","score":69},{"id":"arxiv_2407.13312","title":"Faith Believes, Hope Expects: The Impact of Calvin's Theology on the Mathematics of Chance","authors":[{"name":"Timothy C. Johnson"}],"abstract":"This paper attributes the sudden emergence of mathematical probability and statistics in the second half of the seventeenth century to Calvin's Reformed theology. Calvin accommodated Epicurean chance with Stoic determinism and synthesised \\emph{phronesis/prudentia}, founded personal experience and employed to deal with \\emph{tyche/fortuna}, and \\emph{episteme/scientia}, universal knowledge. This meant that matters of chance, which had previously been considered too particular for mathematical treatment, became part of \\emph{episteme/scientia}. Clear evidence of the significance of Calvin in mathematics is in the facts that Huygens considered using the word 'hope' to describe mathematical expectation and French mathematics still uses \\emph{espérance} for mathematical expectation. Calvin asserted that Hope represented a universal, objective and indubitable idea making it characteristic of mathematics. The argument is built on a review of how the ideas of Hope, Faith and Prudence have evolved in European thought that highlights Calvin's innovations. The conclusion identifies contemporary issues in the application of mathematics in society that are illuminated in light of Calvin's doctrine.","source":"arXiv","year":2024,"language":"en","subjects":["math.HO"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.13312","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.13312","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2024-07-18T09:14:38Z","score":68},{"id":"arxiv_2406.05498","title":"SelfDefend: LLMs Can Defend Themselves against Jailbreaking in a Practical Manner","authors":[{"name":"Xunguang Wang"},{"name":"Daoyuan Wu"},{"name":"Zhenlan Ji"},{"name":"Zongjie Li"},{"name":"Pingchuan Ma"},{"name":"Shuai Wang"},{"name":"Yingjiu Li"},{"name":"Yang Liu"},{"name":"Ning Liu"},{"name":"Juergen Rahmel"}],"abstract":"Jailbreaking is an emerging adversarial attack that bypasses the safety alignment deployed in off-the-shelf large language models (LLMs) and has evolved into multiple categories: human-based, optimization-based, generation-based, and the recent indirect and multilingual jailbreaks. However, delivering a practical jailbreak defense is challenging because it needs to not only handle all the above jailbreak attacks but also incur negligible delays to user prompts, as well as be compatible with both open-source and closed-source LLMs. Inspired by how the traditional security concept of shadow stacks defends against memory overflow attacks, this paper introduces a generic LLM jailbreak defense framework called SelfDefend, which establishes a shadow LLM as a defense instance (in detection state) to concurrently protect the target LLM instance (in normal answering state) in the normal stack and collaborate with it for checkpoint-based access control. The effectiveness of SelfDefend builds upon our observation that existing LLMs can identify harmful prompts or intentions in user queries, which we empirically validate using mainstream GPT-3.5/4 models against major jailbreak attacks. To further improve the defense's robustness and minimize costs, we employ a data distillation approach to tune dedicated open-source defense models. When deployed to protect GPT-3.5/4, Claude, Llama-2-7b/13b, and Mistral, these models outperform seven state-of-the-art defenses and match the performance of GPT-4-based SelfDefend, with significantly lower extra delays. Further experiments show that the tuned models are robust to adaptive jailbreaks and prompt injections.","source":"arXiv","year":2024,"language":"en","subjects":["cs.CR","cs.AI"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.05498","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.05498","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2024-06-08T15:45:31Z","score":68},{"id":"doaj_10.19166/dil.v6i1.7884","title":"Hubungan Antara Profesionalisme Dosen dengan Karakter Kristiani Mahasiswa (Studi Korelasi di Fakultas Ilmu Pendidikan Universitas Pelita Harapan, Tangerang) [The Relationship Between Lecturer Professionalism and Student Christian Character (Correlation Study at the Faculty of Education, Pelita Harapan University, Tangerang)]","authors":[{"name":"Abednego Tri Gumono"},{"name":"Yusak Tanasyah"},{"name":"Amos Naolaka"}],"abstract":"The realization of character education is a shared responsibility of both parents and educational institutions. Higher education as an integral educational facility has a responsibility to develop aspects of character. This is because character is an important domain in forming a student's personality as a whole. In this way, students can grow cognitively, affectively and psychometrically. The Faculty of Education, Pelita Harapan University has a profile of students who are competent, have character, have a calling as Christian teachers (Calling), and have compassion (compassion). To realize this profile, it must be supported by the professionalism of lecturers with the characteristics of having a loving spirit like the good Samaritan and a spirit of self-emptying of Christ in serving. The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between lecturer professionalism and student Christian character. The results of this research will provide an overview, evaluation, and input to build Christian character in a sustainable manner. The method used in this research is a correlative quantitative method. The research results show that lecturer professionalism is significantly related to students' Christian character. The research results show that there is a correlation between lecturer professionalism and student Christian character of .537. Thus, it can be concluded that the correlation between lecturer professionalism and student Christian character is in the strong category. The test results show the significance value (p = .000) is smaller than 0.05. This means that there is not enough evidence to accept the proposed hypothesis (reject Ho). Thus, it can be concluded that there is a significant correlation between lecturer professionalism and student Christian character.\n\nBAHASA INDONESIA ABSTRACT: Perwujudan pendidikan karakter merupakan tanggung jawab bersama antara orang tua dan institusi pendidikan. Perguruan tinggi sebagai salah satu sarana pendidikan yang tidak terpisahkan memiliki tanggung jawab untuk mengembangkan aspek karakter. Hal ini dikarenakan karakter merupakan domain penting dalam membentuk kepribadian mahasiswa secara utuh. Dengan demikian, mahasiswa dapat berkembang secara kognitif, afektif dan psikomotorik. Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan Universitas Pelita Harapan memiliki profil mahasiswa yang kompeten, berkarakter, memiliki panggilan sebagai guru Kristen (Calling), dan memiliki belas kasih (compassion). Untuk mewujudkan profil tersebut, harus didukung oleh profesionalisme dosen dengan ciri-ciri memiliki semangat mengasihi seperti orang Samaria yang baik hati dan semangat mengosongkan diri seperti Kristus dalam melayani. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui hubungan antara profesionalisme dosen dengan karakter kristiani mahasiswa. Hasil penelitian ini akan memberikan gambaran, evaluasi dan masukan untuk membangun karakter kristiani secara berkelanjutan. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode kuantitatif korelasional. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa profesionalisme dosen berhubungan secara signifikan dengan karakter kristiani mahasiswa. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat korelasi antara profesionalisme dosen dengan karakter kristiani mahasiswa sebesar 0,537. Dengan demikian, dapat disimpulkan bahwa korelasi antara profesionalisme dosen dengan karakter Kristen mahasiswa berada pada kategori kuat Hasil uji t menunjukkan nilai signifikansi (p=.000) lebih kecil dari 0.05. Hal ini berarti tidak terdapat cukup bukti untuk menerima hipotesis yang diajukan (tolak Ho). Dengan demikian, dapat disimpulkan bahwa ada hubungan yang signifikan antara profesionalisme dosen dengan karakter kristiani mahasiswa.","source":"DOAJ","year":2024,"language":"","subjects":["Christianity","Practical religion. The Christian life","The Bible"],"doi":"10.19166/dil.v6i1.7884","url":"https://ojs.uph.edu/index.php/DIL/article/view/7884","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"","score":68},{"id":"doaj_10.4102/ve.v45i1.3169","title":"The parable of the Two Mothers: An unhiding reading of the parable of the Prodigal Son","authors":[{"name":"Charel D. du Toit"}],"abstract":"The parable of the Prodigal Son is traditionally viewed from an androcentric perspective, focusing on the male characters, such as the father and brothers. However, this article suggests that the original listeners may have perceived female characters as present and significant. It briefly explores the roles of the Prodigal’s mother and the father’s mother, proposing an alternative interpretation. Evidence indicates that a 1st-century audience might have envisioned a parallel narrative, termed ‘the Parable of the Two Mothers’, within the story. This imagined parallel parable could reflect the high-context understanding of the original hearers. The article aims to reconstruct this proposed parallel parable not only as a potentially imagined narrative within the Prodigal Son but also as a counter-narrative tool. This tool seeks to aid faith communities in addressing gender-based violence (GBV) by offering a narrative device that brings women’s voices to the forefront in congregational and social contexts.\n\nIntradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The interdisciplinary nature of this article contributes to the debate on the roles and importance of women in the church by investigating the value that women had in the parables of Jesus. Furthermore, this article promotes an inclusive reading of biblical texts aiming to combat the pandemic of GBV in South African communities. By reading women as present in the text, emphasis is given to the voices of women in the Bible and the importance of their representation today. This research is also in line with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender equality and women empowerment.","source":"DOAJ","year":2024,"language":"","subjects":["Practical Theology"],"doi":"10.4102/ve.v45i1.3169","url":"https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/3169","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"","score":68},{"id":"doaj_Call+for+Papers+%E2%80%93+LIMINA+8%3A2+%28Autumn+2025%29+%3A+Peace+in+Times+of+Political+and+Moral+Uncertainty","title":"Call for Papers – LIMINA 8:2 (Autumn 2025) : Peace in Times of Political and Moral Uncertainty","authors":null,"abstract":"","source":"DOAJ","year":2024,"language":"","subjects":["Practical Theology","Doctrinal Theology"],"url":"https://resolver.obvsg.at/urn:nbn:at:at-ubg:4-59756","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"","score":68},{"id":"doaj_10.19059/mukaddime.1500155","title":"\n                            Ulemadan Münevvere Osmanlı Müelliflerinin Yerel Dillere Bakışı (Kürtçe Örneği)\n                        ","authors":[{"name":"Mesut Arslan"}],"abstract":"\n                        Ulema ve münevver bu çalışmada Osmanlı klasik çağı ile Tanzimat sonrası modernleşme sürecini temsil eden iki aydın tipidir. Bu iki tip aynı zamanda dönemlerinin düşünce yapısını, olaylara bakış açısını ve Osmanlı tasavvurunu da temsil etmektedir. Doğası gereği bu iki aydın tipi arasında bir farklılıktan ve çekişmeden söz edilebilir. Bu durum pek çok konuda kendini göstermektedir. Bu çalışmada bu düşünce ve bakış açısı farkının merkezine Kürt dili özelinde yerel dilleri koyacağız: Osmanlı’nın klasik döneminde geleneksel tarzda eğitim almış uleması ile modern dönemde Batılı tarzda eğitim almış münevverinin başta Kürtçe olmak üzere Osmanlı’da konuşulan yerel dillere bakış açısını inceleyeceğiz. “Bu iki eğitimli grup Osmanlı’nın mevcut durumunda ve gelecek planlamasında Kürtleri ve Kürt dilini nereye koyuyordu?” sorusuna cevap arayacağız. Osmanlı klasik çağında imparatorluk atmosferi içinde sıradan bir olgu olan çok dilliliğin Tanzimat sonrası dönemde nasıl çözülmesi gereken bir “sorun” hâline geldiğini örneklerle inceleyeceğiz. Bu bağlamda Gelibolulu Âli, Evliya Çelebi, Namık Kemal, Şemseddin Sâmi, Babanzade İsmail Hakkı, Said-i Meşhûr, Abdullah Cevdet, Ziya Gökalp gibi şahsiyetler ile İstanbul’da yayımlanan Kürd Teavün ve Terakki Gazetesi, Rojî Kurd dergisi, Serbestî gazetesi ve Diyarbekir’de neşredilen Peymân gazetesi başlıca araştırma kaynaklarımız olacak.","source":"DOAJ","year":2024,"language":"","subjects":["Philosophy. Psychology. Religion","Practical Theology","Doctrinal Theology"],"doi":"10.19059/mukaddime.1500155","url":"https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/doi/10.19059/mukaddime.1500155","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"","score":68},{"id":"arxiv_2310.19175","title":"God and the Big-Bang: Past and Modern Debates Between Science and Theology","authors":[{"name":"Gabriele Gionti S. J"}],"abstract":"A short phenomenological account of the genesis and evolution of the universe is presented with emphasis on the primordial phases as well as its physical composition, i.e. dark matter and dark energy. We discuss Einstein's theory of General Relativity and its consequences for the birth of modern relativistic astrophysics. We introduce the Big-Bang theory of Mons. Lemaitre as well as the competing theory of the Steady State Universe of Fred Hoyle. Since Big-Bang theory appeared quite in agreement with Christian doctrine of creation, Pope Pius XII delivered a message to the pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1951 claiming a certain agreement between the creation account in the book of Genesis and the Big-Bang theory (a concordist view), a position which he did not repeat later. On the other hand, Lemaitre always kept separate the scientific and theological planes as two parallel \"lines\" never intersecting, i.e., as two complementary \"magisteria\". Similar kind of tensions, between science and theology, emerge also today with the Hartle-Hawking solution to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation in quantum cosmology and its related speculations. To avoid some sort of confusion between theological and physics concepts, we, briefly, summarise the concept of creation in Christian theology.","source":"arXiv","year":2023,"language":"en","subjects":["physics.hist-ph","astro-ph.CO","gr-qc"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.19175","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.19175","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2023-06-01T16:52:43Z","score":67},{"id":"arxiv_2310.15901","title":"Enhancing Energy Efficiency for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces with Practical Power Models","authors":[{"name":"Zhiyi Li"},{"name":"Jida Zhang"},{"name":"Jieao Zhu"},{"name":"Shi Jin"},{"name":"Linglong Dai"}],"abstract":"Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are widely considered a promising technology for future wireless communication systems. As an important indicator of RIS-assisted communication systems in green wireless communications, energy efficiency (EE) has recently received intensive research interest as an optimization target. However, most previous works have ignored the different power consumption between ON and OFF states of the PIN diodes attached to each RIS element. This oversight results in extensive unnecessary power consumption and reduction of actual EE due to the inaccurate power model. To address this issue, in this paper, we first utilize a practical power model for a RIS-assisted multi-user multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) communication system, which takes into account the difference in power dissipation caused by ON-OFF states of RIS's PIN diodes. Based on this model, we formulate a more accurate EE optimization problem. However, this problem is non-convex and has mixed-integer properties, which poses a challenge for optimization. To solve the problem, an effective alternating optimization (AO) algorithm framework is utilized to optimize the base station and RIS beamforming precoder separately. To obtain the essential RIS beamforming precoder, we develop two effective methods based on maximum gradient search and SDP relaxation respectively. Theoretical analysis shows the exponential complexity of the original problem has been reduced to polynomial complexity. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing ones, leading to a significant increase in EE across a diverse set of scenarios.","source":"arXiv","year":2023,"language":"en","subjects":["eess.SP"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.15901","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.15901","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2023-10-24T15:03:41Z","score":67},{"id":"doaj_10.4102/hts.v79i3.8085","title":"COVID-19 crisis in relation to religion, health and poverty in Zimbabwe: A case study of the Harare urban communities","authors":[{"name":"Joseph Muyangata"},{"name":"Sibiziwe Shumba"}],"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic which started in China in 2019, was originally described as a public health emergency of intercontinental concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) in January 2020. Due to its speedy rate of spread, the WHO then declared it a pandemic after 6 weeks. The global spread of COVID-19 has been attributed to the high mobility between and within countries. Having noted the wide spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost every country affected, developed strict and restrictive public health measures to control the spread of the virus. Such measures included restrictions on country borders and social gatherings. Hence, the main purpose of the paper was to explore the impact of the COVID-19 crisis in relation to religion, health and poverty in Harare urban communities as well as determining solutions to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on those sectors. The research methodology was qualitative in nature. Primary data were collected through in-depth telephone interviews and online open-ended questionnaires. Purposive sampling was used to select the study participants. The findings showed that the COVID-19 pandemic triggered and exposed the inequalities in health. The pandemic also had a strong impact on religious activities and it exacerbated poverty levels as well. Those who had all the access to medication, food and vaccinations during the height of COVID-19 may not fully appreciate the impact that poverty coupled with pandemics left on their communities both religiously and socially. Malnutrition, hunger and sickness were the order of the day among the poor.\n\nContribution: The conclusion was that COVID-19 negatively impacted on the health, religious and social sectors. Therefore, it is critical to maintain preventive and curative services, especially for the most vulnerable populations such as children, older persons, and people with disabilities.","source":"DOAJ","year":2023,"language":"","subjects":["The Bible","Practical Theology"],"doi":"10.4102/hts.v79i3.8085","url":"https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/8085","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"","score":67},{"id":"doaj_10.4102/hts.v79i2.8252","title":"LXX Judith: Removing the fourth wall","authors":[{"name":"Nicholas P.L. Allen"},{"name":"Pierre J. Jordaan"}],"abstract":"Given the strong mimetic and dramatic qualities found in Judith the authors make the suggestion that perhaps, before LXX Judith became a fixed, written text, the basic fabula might well have been part of an oral tradition. The authors accept that an appropriately written dramatic work, whether transmitted through reading or an oral presentation, by means of its performative qualities, has the potential to achieve immediacy. Here, the audience may become captivated with its own familiarity and memory of popular, communally shared narratives. Accordingly, this article attempts to find evidence in the Greek text of LXX Judith for a possible oral precursor. In this context, corroboration is sought for the employment of verbal aspect and mood of the Greek language as well as instances of drama, theatrics, bodily gestures, mnemonic devices or special emphasis on the employment of the senses such as sight, taste and smell. The authors suggest that based on an analysis of the text of Chapter 13, there is much circumstantial evidence for the Judith fabula once being an oral narrative – one that embodies the dramatic and even encourages audience participation. This characteristic strongly suggests the removal of the fourth wall – the notion of an imaginary boundary between any fictional work and its audience.\n\nContribution: This article shows that Judith 13 is indeed the climax of the narrative. However, it goes further. It is a vivid scene with various performative aspects. There are props, dialogue and audience participation. This research is cutting-edge and paves the way for new explorations.","source":"DOAJ","year":2023,"language":"","subjects":["The Bible","Practical Theology"],"doi":"10.4102/hts.v79i2.8252","url":"https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/8252","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"","score":67},{"id":"crossref_10.1080/1756073x.2023.2277004","title":"Doing practical theology ‘from the place where it hurts’: the significance of trauma theology in renewing a practical theology of suffering","authors":[{"name":"Eilidh Galbraith"}],"abstract":"","source":"CrossRef","year":2023,"language":"en","subjects":null,"doi":"10.1080/1756073x.2023.2277004","url":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1756073x.2023.2277004","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"","score":67},{"id":"doaj_10.4102/hts.v78i4.7345","title":"Hair matters: The psychoanalytical significance of the virtual absence of hair in the Book of Job in an African context","authors":[{"name":"Pieter van der Zwan"}],"abstract":"Compared with other biblical books that are named after its main protagonist, Job mentions many (at least 72) body parts. Yet hair is explicitly referred to only once, even when it plays a relatively significant role in other books in the Hebrew Bible. This virtual absence of hair in the book can at first glance be explained by the shaving of Job’s ‘head’ as early as 1:20, using a different verb, גזז, from the one in Leviticus 13:33 and 14:8.9, גלח, where the context is that of צָרָעַת, wrongly translated as ‘leprosy’, but probably referring to the same skin problem from which Job is suffering. This connection to the skin is important, because the two body parts seem to be almost mutually exclusive, as also suggested by 1:21 immediately after the aforementioned shaving, where Job considers himself to be essentially עָרֹם [naked]. This means that hair has, amongst other functions, also a clothing-like role in the book of Job. Three questions will hence be explored: how ‘absence’ is to be psychoanalytically interpreted and more specifically, what consequences all of this has on the virtual absence of hair in the Book of Job and, finally, what relevance this absence has for the South African context.\n\nContribution: Applying a psychoanalytical perspective to both the body and to absence, the biblical text is contextualised on a broader horizon than what the purely historical-critical approach can render. The additional African context widens the relevance of the ancient book even further.","source":"DOAJ","year":2022,"language":"","subjects":["The Bible","Practical Theology"],"doi":"10.4102/hts.v78i4.7345","url":"https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/7345","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"","score":66},{"id":"arxiv_2110.01292","title":"A Survey on Channel Estimation and Practical Passive Beamforming Design for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Wireless Communications","authors":[{"name":"Beixiong Zheng"},{"name":"Changsheng You"},{"name":"Weidong Mei"},{"name":"Rui Zhang"}],"abstract":"Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a key enabling technology to realize smart and reconfigurable radio environment for wireless communications, by digitally controlling the signal reflection via a large number of passive reflecting elements in real-time. Different from conventional wireless communication techniques that only adapt to but have no or limited control over dynamic wireless channels, IRS provides a new and cost-effective means to combat the wireless channel impairments in a proactive manner. However, despite its great potential, IRS faces new and unique challenges in its efficient integration into wireless communication systems, especially its channel estimation and passive beamforming design under various practical hardware constraints. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on the up-to-date research in IRS-aided wireless communications, with an emphasis on the promising solutions to tackle practical design issues. Furthermore, we discuss new and emerging IRS architectures and applications as well as their practical design problems to motivate future research.","source":"arXiv","year":2021,"language":"en","subjects":["cs.IT","cs.ET","eess.SP"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.01292","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.01292","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2021-10-04T09:58:57Z","score":65},{"id":"arxiv_2110.09837","title":"Practical Relevance: A Formal Definition","authors":[{"name":"Patrick Schwaferts"},{"name":"Thomas Augustin"}],"abstract":"There is a general agreement that it is important to consider the practical relevance of an effect in addition to its statistical significance, yet a formal definition of practical relevance is still pending and shall be provided within this paper. It appears that an underlying decision problem, characterized by actions and a loss function, is required to define the notion of practical relevance, rendering it a decision theoretic concept. In the context of hypothesis-based analyses, the notion of practical relevance relates to specifying the hypotheses reasonably, such that the null hypothesis does not contain only a single parameter null value, but also all parameter values that are equivalent to the null value on a practical level. In that regard, the definition of practical relevance is also extended into the context of hypotheses. The formal elaborations on the notion of practical relevance within this paper indicate that, typically, a specific decision problem is implicitly assumed when dealing with the practical relevance of an effect or some results. As a consequence, involving decision theoretic considerations into a statistical analysis suggests itself by the mere nature of the notion of practical relevance.","source":"arXiv","year":2021,"language":"en","subjects":["stat.ME"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.09837","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.09837","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2021-10-19T10:44:53Z","score":65},{"id":"arxiv_1909.12897","title":"Distance Estimation Methods for a Practical Macroscale Molecular Communication System","authors":[{"name":"Fatih Gulec"},{"name":"Baris Atakan"}],"abstract":"Accurate estimation of the distance between the transmitter (TX) and the receiver (RX) in molecular communication (MC) systems can provide faster and more reliable communication. Existing theoretical models in the literature are not suitable for distance estimation in a practical scenario. Furthermore, deriving an analytical model is not easy due to effects such as boundary conditions in the diffusion process, the initial velocity of the molecules and unsteady flows. Therefore, five different practical methods comprising three novel data analysis based methods and two supervised machine learning (ML) methods, Multivariate Linear Regression (MLR) and Neural Network Regression (NNR), are proposed for distance estimation at the RX side. In order to apply the ML methods, a macroscale practical MC system, which consists of an electric sprayer without a fan, alcohol molecules, an alcohol sensor and a microcontroller, is established, and the received signals are recorded. A feature extraction algorithm is proposed to utilize the measured signals as the inputs in ML methods. The numerical results show that the ML methods outperform the data analysis based methods in the root mean square error sense with the cost of complexity. Moreover, the peak time based estimation, which is one of the proposed data analysis based methods, yields better results with respect to the other proposed four methods, as the distance increases. Given the experimental data and fluid dynamics theory, a possible trajectory of the molecules between the TX and RX is given. Our findings show that distance estimation performance is jointly affected by unsteady flows and the non-linearity of the sensor. According to our findings based on fluid dynamics, it is evaluated that fluid dynamics should be taken into account for more accurate parameter estimation in practical macroscale MC systems.","source":"arXiv","year":2019,"language":"en","subjects":["eess.SP"],"doi":"10.1016/j.nancom.2020.100300","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.12897","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.12897","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2019-09-27T20:24:38Z","score":63},{"id":"arxiv_1809.05339","title":"Theology and Metaphysics in Sombre, Scientific Times","authors":[{"name":"Karl Svozil"}],"abstract":"In view of the sobering findings of science, theology and to a lesser degree metaphysics is confronted with a humiliating loss, and a need for reinterpretation, of allegories and narratives which have served as guidance to the perplexed for millennia. Future revolutions of world perception might include the emergence of consciousness and superhuman artificial intelligence from universal computation, extensive virtual reality simulations, the persistence of claims of irreducible chance in the Universe, as well as contacts with alien species and the abundance of inhabited planets. As tragic and as discomforting as this might be perceived for the religious orthodoxy and by individual believers, a theology guided by science may lead us to a better and more adequate understanding of our existence. The post factum theological options are plentiful. These include dualistic scenarios, as well as (to quote Kelly James Clark), a curling or bowling deity, that is, creatio continua, or ex nihilo. These might be grounded in, or corroborated by the metaphysical enigma of existence, which appears to be immune and robust with respect to the aforementioned challenges of science.","source":"arXiv","year":2018,"language":"en","subjects":["physics.hist-ph"],"url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.05339","pdf_url":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.05339","is_open_access":true,"published_at":"2018-09-14T10:19:02Z","score":62}],"total":694298,"page":1,"page_size":20,"sources":["arXiv","DOAJ","CrossRef"],"query":"Practical Theology"}