With so many religions in the world, it isn’t always easy to recall each faith’s key influences, spiritual figures, and dogmas. Written in easy-to-understand language, Religion 101 offers a fascinating—and memorable—glimpse at the sacred stories, traditions, and doctrines that have influenced today’s most popular religions. From Jesus and the Four Noble Truths to the Buddhist Wheel…
No Church is monolithic—this is the preliminary premise of this volume on the public place of religion in a representative number of post-communist countries. The studies confirm that within any religious organization we can expect to find fissures, factions, theological or ideological quarrels, and perhaps even competing interest groups, such as missionary workers, regular clergy versus secu…
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rarely out of the news or the public imagination. Images of red-eyed Terminators illustrate press accounts of incremental advances in medical diagnosis, facial recognition, natural language processing, and robotics. Such advances are transforming society through measurable impacts on people’s decisions and opportunities. Religion and Artificial Intelligence: An…
These lines constitute the beginning and end of a letter, written on papyrus in a dialect of the Coptic Egyptian language and dating to the middle of the fourth century CE.2 The letter would not have been known today had it not been discovered by excavators at Ismant el-Kharab, now a sand-covered ruin in an oasis west in Egypt, once a prosperous…
Papyrus letters seem to convey close and personal information, directly from the mouth (or the pen) of an ancient author. Piene’s letter to his mother Maria accentuates a vivid sense of proximity and similarity. A boy, traveling far away from his mother, expresses his affection for her in a most elegant manner. How different is he from you and me?Intimate as it may feel, this passage may also…
Present- day Germany is a post- Christian nation. Religious pluralism, a decrease of ethical and religious convictions originating in Christianity, individualism, and secularization describe the cultural influences in Germany.1 Mainline churches have suffered from a drastic decline in membership for several decades and expect to lose half of their members by 2060.2 The average…
Humans, animals, plants, rivers, air, earth, seas and mountains – robust, strong and resilient – are not indestructible. The survival of nature itself – of which we are a part – however breathtaking, dazzling, over-powering, awe-inspiring and often endearing it may be, cannot be taken for granted. We are threatened by multiple disruptions.I have long argued that we should not avoid life…
The Viennese Jesuit astronomer Maximilian Hell was a nodal figure in the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge. This study of his career sheds light on the Enlightenment, Catholicism, reform in the Habsburg monarchy, and the cultivation of science in the Republic of Letters. Readership: Anyone interested in eighteenth-century Central Europe and Scandinavia, in the production and circulati…
This edited volume of chapters resulted from an international conference held at the University of Adelaide in July 2016 under the same title to explore the multifaceted concept of ?ilm in Islam — its agency and manifestations in the connected realms of science, religion, and the arts. The aim is to explore the Islamic civilisational responses to major shifts in the concept of ‘knowledge’…
As the first comprehensive work to assemble ideas, concepts, discourses, and extensive essays in this vital area, the Encyclopedia of African Religion explores such topics as deities and divinities, the nature of humanity, the end of life, the conquest of fear, and the quest for attainment of harmony with nature and other humans. Editors Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama include nearly 500 entr…