Victor J. Stenger
Science, Religion and Culture
... whether faith, which is belief despite the absence of evidence or even in the presence of contrary evidence, has any moral or intellectual authority. New Atheism recognizes religion for what it is—a set of unfounded superstitions that have been the greatest hindrance to human progress that ever existed on this planet....
John Shook
Science, Religion and Culture
...the term for exploring unbelief and explaining its reasonableness. Scientific atheology specifically appeals to current sciences and scientific methodologies to help explain why no gods are real. Folk religions and anthropomorphic gods can’t survive, but science vs. religion is hardly the whole story. Only science joined by philosophical reflection suffices to skeptically analyze the natural theology arguments for supernatural gods, too aloof and abstrac...
Reviewed by Elly Vintiadis (www.ellyvintiadis.com)
... it is a conversion from belief to agnosticism or atheism....
H. Bruce Rinker
...iences, indeed all human belief, into an ecological and cultural equilibrium as encompassed by Gaia theory....
Justin P. McBrayer
...t all of our reasons for belief are epistemic in nature. Some of our reasons for belief are prudential in the sense that believing a certain thing advances our personal goals. When it comes to belief in God, the most famous formulation of a prudential reason for belief is Pascal’s Wager. And although Pascal’s Wager fails, its failure is instr...
Justin P. McBrayer
...t all of our reasons for belief are epistemic in nature. Some of our reasons for belief are prudential in the sense that believing a certain thing advances our personal goals. When it comes to belief in God, the most famous formulation of a prudential reason for belief is Pascal’s Wager. And although Pascal’s Wager fails, its failure is instr...
Michael R. Molnar
...ies to support religious beliefs. That idea is central to one of the more recent publications on this subject. Aaron Adair promotes his book, “The Star of Bethlehem: A Skeptical View,” with the claim that no one can ex- plain the Star. The Star, he says, has no historical basis nor can it even be explained as a miracle....
Gregg D. Caruso
...tion consistent with the belief that one’s actions are causally determined (ch.5) and develops a forward-looking theory of moral responsibility consistent with free will skepticism (ch.6). A significant contribution to the field, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life is destined to become a classic and is essential reading for anyone interested in free will and moral responsibility....
David Kyle Johnson
...aims that some religious belief is justified by the occurrence of a miracle, that religious belief is justified only if the belief that the miracle occurred is justified. Hume famously argued that testimony cannot justify belief in the miraculous (and thus also cannot justify religious belief), but I will argue that no...
Jonathan Jong
...nomena—such as the belief in supernatural agents, participation in rituals, formation of non-kin groups, obedience to moral codes, and so forth—that variously co-occur in packages we intuitively label as particular religions. Furthermore, these distinct phenomena are also present among ostensibly nonreligious (or secular) individuals and groups. Scholars of religion and nonreligion should therefore all but abandon the terms “religion” a...
Luke Galen
...the absence of religious belief is accompanied by liabilities. However, a closer examination of the literature reveals that the mechanisms of most beneficial associations with religiosity are attributable to factors other than beliefs, chiefly, social engagement and embeddeness in supportive groups. Often, those with the lowest levels of well-being and prosociality are uncommitted or indifferent religious believers, not soci...
Joseph Langston1*, Joseph Hammer2, Ryan T. Cragun3
...for them, followed by nonbelief not being a salient part of their identity. Notably, approximately one third of secular nonaffiliates indicated that they would join such groups if they were locally available. Neither maximum accommodation nor confrontation with religion was indicated by a majority of nonbelievers, though more respondents opted for accommodation (60%) than confrontation (25%). Most respondents indicated that their willingness to attack or ridic...
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
...ign: justify;">Religious beliefs are the products of natural, intuitive human thinking, and are shared by most humans. Academic research, or science, is the product of counter-intuitive, unnatural psychological processes, and the resulting concepts are beyond the reach of most. It is not surprising that religion has been around for possibly more than 100,000 years, while academic research is a recent historical development. Over the past century, individuals w...
David F. Bradley*, Julie J. Exline, Alex Uzdavines
...ent interactions with nonbelief....
Rabbi Paul Shrell-Fox
...time. To the degree that belief in a supernatural God is a derivative of religious intuition, it is safe to assume that over one’s lifetime, intuition and attitudes towards a belief in God is subject to fluctuation. Dennett and LaScola found this to be true with priests and ministers. That study was the catalyst for the current study of rabbis’ shift in religious beliefs in gen...
Rick Repetti
...process that begins with beliefs and desires and culminates in actions as an ultimately impersonal, agentless process, Buddhism is nonetheless capable of formulating the diametrical opposite of Strawson’s impossibilism and Pereboom’s hard incompatibilism, what I call possibilism or soft compatibilism, the view that free choices and actions can emerge from conditioned or unconditioned mental states, independently of whether the w...
Elly Vintiadis
... and mainstream theistic belief are at ease with each other. It is a main contention of the book that the question of the conflict between science and religion is ill-posed because, properly understood, theism incorporates science since it too, just like science, requires people to seek the truth and to think critically. In order to go about showing why this
is so, Steane embarks on showing what theism is and how it of...
is so, Steane embarks on showing what theism is and how it of...
Corey McCal
... distinct from religious belief and religious institutions, Erdozain argues that the basis for secularization can be found in the religious ferment of modernity itself, beginning with the Protestant Reformation and extending through the first half of the nineteenth century. The book begins with Martin Luther and his critics, proceeds through discussions of Spinoza and the English Dissenters, Voltaire and the French Enlightenment, and, finally, to Darwin’...
Maurice A. Finocchiaro
...and yet conducted in the belief that such topics are too important to leave to religious believers. This approach also characterizes the work of other Berkeley para-clericals, such as Ronald Numbers on the controversy over creationism and evolutionism; they stress such attitudes as impartiality, judiciousness, and even-handedness....
Tanzila Kazmi*, Abid Ghafoor Chaudhry*, Aftab Ahmed** and Shaheer Ellahi Khan**
FARMERS BELIEFS ABOUT INDIGENOUS FARMING PRACTICES AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
...to cultivate insight and beliefs regarding the indigenous farming practices and how it is related with sustainable agricultural development. During the study a mixture of qualitative techniques including interview guide(s), focus group discussions (FGDs) and case study were used. The study revealed that indigenous knowledge is a long term process and demands a complete approach to achieve destined goals. On the other hand it was also found that the lack of kno...
Nazish Imran
...e positive self-efficacy beliefs, are productive and able to tackle developmental challenges adequately.(4) On the other hand, poor mental health in young age is associated with school failure, delinquency, social and peer problems, substance misuse alongside adverse outcomes in adulthood.
...
Thomas W. Clark
...ttern – character, beliefs, desires – that constitutes each of us as a person. The feeling of being a singular self that owns these characteristics is real enough, but there’s no indivisible thing to which that feeling refers. Rather, it’s the result of a subset of neural goings-on tasked with reliably distinguishing the physical person from the rest of the world, all in service to effective action. For reasons under investigation by ne...
Hans Van Eyghen
...ientific theories debunk belief in spirits. I reconstruct the argument as an argument for the conclusion that belief in spirits is unreliably formed. In order to assess the argument I look closer at three well-known explanations of how people form belief in spirits. They are: the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device, an explanation that points to the effect of infrasound, and an explanation...
Sobia Faisal1*,Qurat-ul-Ain Ahmad2, Maleeha Manzoor3, Madiha Manzoor4, Faisal Rifaq5
Socio-psychological factors related to tuberculosis diagnostic test seeking behavior in Pakistan
...behavior. Further, false beliefs and distrust in treatment are the perceived barriers,
which decrease motivation for benefits and superimpose the condition....
which decrease motivation for benefits and superimpose the condition....
Muhammad Naeem*, Sohail Asghar**
A REVIEW OF FEATURE SELECTION TECHNIQUES IN STRUCTURE LEARNING
...cs for inducing Bayesian belief networks for the purpose of automatic distillation of knowledge from masses of data with target concepts. However, there are various circumstances where we are confronted to fix a set of most influencing variables in modelling of class variable. This arises in provision of confidence measures on set of variables used in the structure learning of data. In this study, we have tweaked empirical as well as theore...
Mukhtar Iderawumi Abdulraheem1*, Muhammad Ihtisham2*, Abiodun Yusuff Moshood3, Nawab Khan4, Muhammad Owais Shahid5, Shafiq Hussain6, Kumail Abbas6 and Fawad Zaman7
...l diseases, restrict the belief of these intended goals. The current experiment assessed the effects of mulching materials and weeding regimes on the severity and incidence of not unusual viral diseases on okra without fertilizers/chemicals application. The treatments were (3×4) factorially designed and fitted into RCBD in field conditions. Weeding consisted of four levels i.e. no weeding, weeding once, weeding twice, and weeding thrice, whereas mulching...
Ghulam Abbas1*, Muhammad Arshad1, Muhammad Saeed2*; Safdar Imran3, Ashgar Ali Kamboh4, Duraid KA Al-Taey5, Muhammad Asad Aslam1, Muhammad Saeed Imran6, Muhammad Ashraf3, Muhammad Asif7, Abdul Jabbar Tanveer8, Razia Abdul Majid Qureshi9, Maria Arshad1, Hussain Ahmed Khan Niazi1, Muhammad Tariq10, Sikandar Abbas1
...y birds. There’s a belief that more research is required to determine the direct effect of OA in multiple stages of poultry health and diseases of infectious nature to determine the appropriate amount of supplementation of OA.
Keywords | Organic acids, Gut health, Natural compounds, Poultry health, Layer production.
...
Olufemi Bolarin, Sijuade Adebukola Adebayo and Sola Emmanuel Komolafe*
...ate finance, traditional belief, and inadequate access to new technologies were serious constraints encountered by yam farmers. The study recommends that government in collaboration with development agencies should intensify effort in creating awareness to farmers on the several ways of building resilience to mitigate the menace of negative influence of climate change.
...
Hafiz Husnain Nawaz1*, Ayesha Ahsan2, Amir Afzal1, Muhammad Ashraf Sumrah1, Muhammad Jan1, Kashif Ali1, Muhammad Arsalan1 and Rizwan Latif3
... on the future work with belief that C. sativa is a valuable crop that should be further investigated for commercial and culinary purposes....
M. Bashir Chaudhry (Dr.), M. Alim Mian and M. Rafiq
..., country to the general belief; salinity and water logging are not a 'twin menace'. Most of the salt-affected soils were formed un ancient times, much before the recent rise in water table due to seepage from the canal system. The recent high water table conditions have, however produced o salt puff on these soils. The saline soils that have been grouped in five main categories occupy 14.3 million acres in the Indus plains but only 7.8 million acres in the ca...
Heba El-Sayed Mostafa1,2*, Lama Sulaiman Alahmadi1, Shiyma Abullah Alrahule1, Nada Fareed Alzughaibi1, Hala Rafat Zulali1, Yasmin Islam Magdi3, Saada Saad Alharbi1
...entify the attitudes and beliefs among male and female students. To explore the possible solutions for these gaps of knowledge and areas to recommend these solutions to the concerned authorities. An observational cross-sectional study. This study was conducted at health colleges in Saudi Arabia. Telephone/face-to-face questionnaires were collected by data collectors using multistage and cluster sampling. There were four sections to the questionnaire, which wer...
