Hasil untuk "Religions. Mythology. Rationalism"

Alan R. Vincelette

Protection of the environment and its life forms has become a significant concern among philosophers and theologians alike in recent years. There is disagreement, however, over the best way to formulate the grounds of this concern. Some philosophers and theologians favor an instrumental or anthropocentric approach, claiming that adequate preservation of wildlife is warranted solely on the basis of benefits provided to humans, whether couched in terms of the satisfaction of material, medicinal, recreational, or psychological needs. Others claim that wild nature should be preserved for its own sake, due to its life forms possessing intrinsic value. How best to articulate and defend the intrinsic value of wildlife, however, has been much disputed. This paper first compares the adequacy of anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics. It concludes that a non-anthropocentric theory of the intrinsic value of living creatures is best suited to motivate care for and action on behalf of the environment, and, in addition, most accurately reflects the basis of human concern for the environment. This paper next goes on to examine the philosophical underpinnings required for a theory of the intrinsic value of nature. It argues that an objective account of the intrinsic value of nature, founded on some form of <i>non-naturalist ethics</i> or <i>minimal theism</i>, seems necessary to account for the intrinsic value of nature (in contrast with a purely subjective or naturalist approach). In particular, a sacramental view of nature wherein creation issues from a creator who is goodness itself seems ideal for grounding the intrinsic value of wildlife, along with motivating humans to contribute energy and resources to their conservation and even to sacrifice some of their interests in order to do so. This being the case, rather than being a hindrance to environmental ethics, religion, if properly formulated, can be a most helpful ally.

Ünal Çamdalı

Thermodynamics is the most basic energy science. It is derived from the words thermal (heat) and dynamic (motion). Although its laws have existed since the beginning of the universe, the development of thermodynamics as a science was with the invention of steam engines in England. These laws, as known, are the Zeroth, First, Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics. These are four macro laws, and they were determined based on observation. They are not the product of theoretical thought. Zeroth Law reveals the basic structure of temperature measurement, based on the principle that if two different systems are in thermal equilibrium separately with a third system, there must be thermal equilibrium between them. The First and Second Laws are the fundamental laws regarding energy. The first law, also known as the law of conservation of energy, and the second law, also known as the law of entropy, along with explaining the principles of energy conversion; also make a significant contribution to understand the functioning mechanism of the universe. The Third Law states that as chemically homogeneous and perfectly crystalline substances approach absolute zero temperature (273 C, 0 K), their entropy (or entropy changes) will also approach zero; in other words, it states that there can be no disorder or movement in the substances in question at this temperature. It is also important that thermodynamics science has a wide range of applications, from technical fields to philosophy, therefore it is known by large masses. Because its laws are among the most fundamental laws of the universe, in other words it is universal. Laws are noteworthy for the establishment, operation and analysis of engineering and many other systems, as well as for understanding the order of the universe. Additionally, some cosmologists strive to explain the order and functioning mechanism of the universe by making use of the laws of thermodynamics. Moreover, the laws of thermodynamics also give clues about the existence of the universe. Entropy, defined based on the second law of thermodynamics, is a phenomenon that gives the numerical magnitude of the disorder or complexity of a system. The more disordered or complex a system is, the greater its irreversibility and entropy will be. There is also a structure of the law that affects every system everywhere in the universe. It is not dependent on time and space. Time and space are literally subject to this law. The law has been in effect since the beginning of the universe, and it will continue to exist if the universe exists. Because universe means system; system means mechanism; mechanism means a structure that works according to the sovereignty of laws. Energy is needed to sustain life. Even though energy is not destroyed, the use of resources means that they move from a certain potential to a dead state (environment) because of the law of entropy. This process is valid for all systems in the universe. While all energies are processed through this process, living creatures in nature experience a similar process as they move from life to death. Eventually, all energy sources in the universe will go to the environment and become dead. This situation can be described as the entropy apocalypse of the universe. The concept of the apocalypse also reflects chaotic conditions such as noise and turmoil. Sources state that a cosmically stagnant situation will occur before the apocalypse. This is the cosmic dead state of the universe. In this study, an attempt was made to establish a relationship between entropy and doomsday by using the laws of Thermodynamics. In this context, the fact that the end of the universe is similar to the point where the entropy apocalypse will occur, as expressed in the doomsday scenario in religious literature (including the Religion of Islam), is tried to be explained on the plane of science and religion.

Annette Potgieter

Paul often uses metaphors as a method of persuasion. In Rom 8, Paul’s use of kinship metaphors such as “sonship” and being “heirs” is particularly ubiquitous. Paul writes to an audience situated in Rome where they would have been well aware of kinship metaphors as this inter alia formed part of the Julio-Claudio Caesars’ vocabulary and legitimation of their rule. Paul’s familial metaphors would have resonated with an audience in Rome au fait with the notion of adoption and its implications. The use of the images of “sonship” and “heir” also function as spatial metaphors indicating a vertical and horizontal understanding which the audience would have picked up on. The spatial metaphors contribute to an understanding of “in” and “out”, underscoring an alternative family identity found in Christ. These metaphors play a role in the formation and construction of what is later to be called early Christianity.

Emanuele Pacifici, Marco Vergani

Let $G$ be a finite group and, for a given complex character $χ$ of $G$, let ${\mathbb{Q}}(χ)$ denote the field extension of ${\mathbb{Q}}$ obtained by adjoining all the values $χ(g)$, for $g\in G$. The group $G$ is called quadratic rational if, for every irreducible complex character $χ\in{\rm{Irr}}(G)$, the field ${\mathbb{Q}}(χ)$ is an extension of ${\mathbb{Q}}$ of degree at most $2$. Quadratic rational groups have a nice characterization in terms of the structure of the group of central units in their integral group ring, and in fact they generalize the well-known concept of a cut group (i.e., a finite group whose integral group ring has a finite group of central units). In this paper we classify the Frobenius groups that are quadratic rational, a crucial step in the project of describing the Gruenberg-Kegel graphs associated to quadratic rational groups. It turns out that every Frobenius quadratic rational group is uniformly semi-rational, i.e., it satisfies the following property: all the generators of any cyclic subgroup of $G$ lie in at most two conjugacy classes of $G$, and these classes are permuted by the same element of the Galois group ${\rm{Gal}}({\mathbb{Q}}_{|G|}/{\mathbb{Q}})$ (in general, every cut group is uniformly semi-rational, and every uniformly semi-rational group is quadratic rational). We will also see that the class of groups here considered coincides with the one studied in [4], thus the main result of this paper also completes the analysis carried out in [4].

Ram Karan Choudhary, Sunil Kumar Prajapati

In this article, we study rational matrix representations of VZ $p$-groups ($p$ is any prime). Utilizing our findings on VZ $p$-groups, we explicitly obtain all inequivalent irreducible rational matrix representations of all $p$-groups of order $\leq p^4$. Furthermore, we establish combinatorial formulas to determine the Wedderburn decompositions of rational group algebras for VZ $p$-groups and all $p$-groups of order $\leq p^4$, ensuring simplicity in the process.

Jennifer Hom, Sungkyung Kang, JungHwan Park

A knot in $S^3$ is topologically slice if it bounds a locally flat disk in $B^4$. A knot in $S^3$ is rationally slice if it bounds a smooth disk in a rational homology ball. We prove that the smooth concordance group of topologically and rationally slice knots admits a $\mathbb{Z}^\infty$ subgroup. All previously known examples of knots that are both topologically and rationally slice were of order two. As a direct consequence, it follows that there are infinitely many topologically slice knots that are strongly rationally slice but not slice.

Mao Shi

By studying the existing higher order derivation formulas of rational Bézier curves, we find that they fail when the order of the derivative exceeds the degree of the curves. In this paper, we present a new derivation formula for rational Bézier curves that overcomes this drawback and show that the $k$th degree derivative of a $n$th degree rational Bézier curve can be written in terms of a $(2^kn)$th degree rational Bézier curve.we also consider the properties of the endpoints and the bounds of the derivatives.

O. Şahin

Humanity gradually shifted away from religion and the sacred in the modern age, but in the postmodern age, people have discovered that science and reason alone cannot satisfy them. As a result, people returned in various ways to mythology, religion, and the mystical. Cinema, one of the most popular arts of the visual age, could not possibly ignore this move. Religious themes and elements are prevalent in films. Humanity has lost confidence in metanarratives thanks to postmodernism, and is shown to be on a different quest for meaning, particularly in science fiction and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic films. In many films, this quest evolves into a quest for the transcendent. People contemplate the beginning and the end; they speculate about their origins and their future directions. Postmodern viewers are drawn to the holy, mystical, mythological, and transcendental quests offered in movie theaters. As a result, the film business, which is capitalist in nature, uses this tactic to produce stories that are transcendental, sacred, mythological, mystical, magical, supernatural, and, generally speaking, religious. This essay explores the attempt of postmodern man to use cinema to re-enchant the demystified universe. The postmodern man is tired of extreme rationalism and is on a philosophical quest. The study analyzes five science fiction movies, which are also referred to as apocalyptic movies. These are Avatar (2009), Interstellar (2014), Prometheus (2012), War of the Worlds (2005), and I Am Legend (2007). The article argues that in these movies, post-modern man’s quest for meaning is addressed with some sort of transcendence, his modern identity is developed into a postmodern one, or a postmodern identity is brought forth, and his worries about the end are mostly appeased with a postmodern uncertainty.

Pavel Kolář

In recent years, new exciting, publicly debated, and further thought-provoking events have appeared in the Czech Republic including, the restoration and benediction of the Marian Column on the Old Town Square in Prague, Darina Alster’s art performance, the <i>Non-binary Madonna</i>, the opening of the new Jan Palach Memorial in Všetaty and the temporary memorial to the victims of COVID-19. All these events, taking place in public, manifested qualities associated with religious practices and the concept of the sacred. Pointing selectively to trends in religious geography (Kong) and utilising the concepts of liquid religion (de Groot) and iconic religion (Tweed, Knott), this case study describes and analyses those events and shortly discusses their public reconciliatory character. It claims that the religious or sacral character of public objects or acts in a secular setting is permanently subject to questioning, contesting and opposition. Ritually enacted boundaries between non-negotiable values (the sacred) and values permanently negotiated (the profane) are always temporary and elusive in the public domain, as so it is with public acts of reconciliation.

Julian Gutierrez, Muhammad Najib, Giuseppe Perelli et al.

Rational verification refers to the problem of checking which temporal logic properties hold of a concurrent multiagent system, under the assumption that agents in the system choose strategies that form a game-theoretic equilibrium. Rational verification can be understood as a counterpart to model checking for multiagent systems, but while classical model checking can be done in polynomial time for some temporal logic specification languages such as CTL, and polynomial space with LTL specifications, rational verification is much harder: the key decision problems for rational verification are 2EXPTIME-complete with LTL specifications, even when using explicit-state system representations. Against this background, our contributions in this paper are threefold. First, we show that the complexity of rational verification can be greatly reduced by restricting specifications to GR(1), a fragment of LTL that can represent a broad and practically useful class of response properties of reactive systems. In particular, we show that for a number of relevant settings, rational verification can be done in polynomial space and even in polynomial time. Second, we provide improved complexity results for rational verification when considering players' goals given by mean-payoff utility functions; arguably the most widely used approach for quantitative objectives in concurrent and multiagent systems. Finally, we consider the problem of computing outcomes that satisfy social welfare constraints. To this end, we consider both utilitarian and egalitarian social welfare and show that computing such outcomes is either PSPACE-complete or NP-complete.

Xingjun Lin

For the affine vertex algebra $V_k(\mathfrak{g})$ at an admissible level $k$ of $\hat{\mathfrak{g}}$, we prove that certain subcategory of weak $V_k(\mathfrak{g})$-module category is semisimple. As a consequence, we show that $V_k(\mathfrak{g})$ is rational with respect to a family of Virasoro elements. We also prove that certain affine vertex operator superalgebras and minimal $W$-algebras are rational with respect to a family of Virasoro elements.

D. Hocking, Kimberly J. Babbitt

Maharani Suryadie Putri, Firdaus Imaduddin

This study aims to reveal the phenomena, historical facts, and developments of Islamophobia in France from time to time and the government's attitude about it. The type of research is qualitative research, using historical methods. The data are collected from journals, newspapers, historical records and verbal reports. The results of this study indicate that there are changes in the reaction of the French authorities to Muslims. In 1914-1918 France accepted workers from Islamic countries. While between 1976 and 1989, massive places of worship were built, French Muslims also formed religious organizations and communities. However, several incidents of terrorism which occurred in various parts of the world that accuse Islam as the perpetrator behind it all, gave rise to the term 'Islamophobia' in the West. As a result, the French authorities made several regulations that clearly discriminated against Muslims. The issue of Islamophobia is based on at least three things; first, Islam has been considered an integral part of French society. Second, Islam is the cause of the economic recession. Third, the September 11 tragedy made Islam labeled as a terrorist actor.

Itamar Rickover, Ofra Ben Ishai, Ayala Keissar-Sugarman

In recent years, Israel has witnessed two significant processes that challenge the dominant republican discourse that prioritizes military over national-civic service (known as The Israeli national-civilian service—NCS)in terms of contributing the constitution of citizenship and of the material and symbolic convertibility offered to service candidates. The first is related to the expanding range of roles offered in the NCS. The second, related process, which is our current focus, occurs among young religious women from the urban upper-middle class who respond to this expansion by seeking to serve in technological roles, given their high qualifications. Combined, these processes transform the status of the NCS and accelerate the de-monopolization of military service. To examine the contribution of religious young women to the change in the status of service in Israel, we conducted a narrative analysis of interviews with service candidates. Our analysis revealed their strategic use of four different discourses: the neo-liberal economic discourse, the liberal rights and self-realization discourse, the ethnonational discourse, and the religious gender discourse. The way the participants negotiated the four discourses to justify their selection of either military or national-civic service structured their agency as actors transforming the power equation between the two types of service.

Andrej Preložnik

Jews settled in three coastal towns of the medieval diocese of Koper (Capodistria) – Koper, Izola and Piran – at the end of the 14th century. They came there stimulated by the needs of cities that, after the collapse of Tuscan banks, did not have the financial sources to support the developing economy. In addition to some bankers who are fairly well known from archival sources, we also have to consider a layer of the poorer population of servants and merchants. These were relatively small communities composed of few families, which were tolerated in a distinctly Catholic environment, but in close contact with the majority population sometimes received a benevolent or even aggressive pressure to convert. For studied region, there is no systematic study about this topic yet. However, there are some archival or written sources related to it in one way or another. Although these are mostly short notes or remarks within other discussions, which certainly do not represent the whole background of these stories, they still give us some idea of the dynamics of that kind of relations between religious communities and at the same time the formal position of the Venetian and local authorities about conversions and freedom of faith between 15th and 18th century.

P. Anderson, P. Fiddes

Abstract Ideas of love within religion are usually driven by one of two mythologies – either a personal God who commands love or a mystical God of ineffable love – but both are inadequate for motivating love of neighbour. The first tends towards legalism and the second offers no cognitive guidance. The situation is further complicated by there being different understandings of love of neighbour in the various Abrahamic religions, as exemplified in the approaches of two philosophers, Søren Kierkegaard and Emmanuel Levinas. A better approach is therefore to explore actual practices of love in everyday life, and to discover how love might be performed openly and creatively. One such practice is recognition of vulnerability, and this too is often driven by a mythology, in this case one marked by fear, and by a violence either imposed or avoided. One paradigmatic example is the vulnerability felt by speakers, especially women, in front of an audience. A turning from wilful ignorance of vulnerability and a turning to reliance on collective work, modelled on an awareness of mutual vulnerability and openness to the unknown, will help to change our philosophical and social imaginary. The dark myth of vulnerability can be transformed into finding opportunities in vulnerability for openness to affection and so to an enhancement of life. It is only from the perspective of this new imaginary, and from everyday practices of it, that the double love-command – love of God and love of neighbour – will function as any kind of common ground between religions.

V. M. Naidysh

The author analyzes the transformations of Hellenic theologys content and forms in the epoch of early antique classics (1st half of the 5th century B.C.). The general orientation of such transformations is the generalization of mythological gods meanings into the abstract implications of the Absolute, which is not yet sacral in its full sense and not transcendent. Besides, this period is the end of the decentralization of consciousness. Cognitive limitations to the development of abstract conceptual thinking and the rational component of consciousness are removed. This processs main points transform mythology into artistic and aesthetic creativity (folklore, mythopoetic epic, etc.), religious consciousness, and theology. Rationalism is always critical. Critical rationalism inevitably leads to historicism. Therefore, the formation of a historical attitude strengthens at the sight of the critical approach. The world's mythological image is increasingly being questioned (first in parts, and then in general). Its content is being transferred to the past. Finally, the era of early classicism comes into play. It is a time when theology becomes a field of philosophical and theoretical reflection on myth and an area of its artistic and aesthetic experience. The most influential form of such an understanding of myth was the theater. The ancient theater served as a spiritual and practical form of ancient theology, a subject embodiment of theology in stage action.

Carlo Leget

Forgiveness is an important theme in end-of-life care in all spiritual and religious traditions, although it is framed differently. Looking at research on forgiveness in palliative care literature from the last two decades, it is clear that forgiveness is predominantly carried out from a psychological perspective. According to this approach, forgiveness is seen as something that can be managed and taught in order to reduce stress and promote health. There is no doubt that this approach has its merits and is useful for dealing with guilt from the individual perspective of one’s own psychological health. From a moral perspective, however, forgiveness is more than dealing with personal feelings of guilt. In order to show the differences and gaps between the psychological and moral perspectives on forgiveness, I discuss the work of the German philosopher Svenja Flaßpöhler. I show that, from a moral perspective, forgiveness can neither be managed or taught, nor seen as a form of understanding, loving, or forgetting. As a conclusion, I formulate some recommendations for future research on forgiveness, distinguishing between the psychological and moral perspectives on forgiveness.

D. Taggart

In Old Norse mythology, gods like Freyja, Odin, and Thor are usually characterized as human-like creatures: they walk and ride animals, eat, grow old, and even die. Was there more to conceptions of Old Norse gods than those anthropomorphic representations? This article presents evidence that the gods of early Scandinavia were sometimes thought of as superperceiving and able to act in ways that defied the limitations of a physical body. It engages with and challenges theological correctness, a prominent theory in the Cognitive Science of Religion, to elucidate the sources of Old Norse religion and the cognitive and contextual foundations of the representations of gods encountered there. Following an examination of the mechanisms through which Old Norse gods’ superperception and disembodied action were narrativized and rationalized, the article concludes with a discussion of the consequences of non-anthropomorphic representations of the gods for understanding Scandinavian worshippers’ everyday religious life.

There has recently been a surge of development in augmented reality (AR) technologies that has led to an ecosystem of hardware and software for AR, including tools for artists and designers to accelerate the design of AR content and experiences without requiring complex programming. AR is viewed as a key “disruptive technology” and future display technologies (such as digital eyewear) will provide seamless continuity between reality and the digitally augmented. This article will argue that the technologization of human perception and experience of reality, coupled with the development of artificial intelligence (AI)–based natural language assistants, may lead to a secular re‐enchantment of the world, in the sense outlined by Charles Taylor, where human existence is shaped through AR inhabited by advanced personal and social AI agents in the form of digital avatars and daemons, and that enchantment has been persistent throughout the formation of modernity and is being rekindled by the integration of AI in the plane of AR.