Egypt and Christianity in antiquity – TheTLS

Egypt and Christianity in antiquity – TheTLS:

Late antique Egyptian Christianity has left a wonderfully rich, and sometimes beguilingly strange, literary and material heritage for us to appreciate and try to interpret. There are tales of holy men who could command man-eating crocodiles and pronounce curses, and of dramatic feats of ascetic renunciation in the desert. Papyrus fragments include oracles, spells and curses; the walls of monasteries still display the paintings of saints and the graffiti of pilgrims. The two books under review offer new and complementary approaches to understanding this heritage and the world it came from. Each is strongly influenced by theoretical approaches that stress the importance of material culture, but they both remain humane and indeed sympathetic.

Darwin In Your Brain. Four Reasons Why Evolutionary Psychology Is Controversial – The Evolution Institute

Darwin In Your Brain. Four Reasons Why Evolutionary Psychology Is Controversial – The Evolution Institute:

Evolutionary psychology, like sociobiology or Marxism, has become associated with controversy. Why should it, and why has it? Yes, debates about evolution totter endlessly along, and psychology remains a discipline that sometimes seems orphaned by both humanities and the hard sciences. Why should combining psychology and evolution ignite a confabulation of loathing, fear, and scientific vitriol?

Which Countries Are Caucasian?

Which Countries Are Caucasian?:
The region of the Caucasus takes its name from the mountain range of the same name that is 5000 meters in height. It is located between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, straddling Russia to the north and Turkey and Iran to the south. The Caucasus is divided into two main regions: the northern Caucasus, called Ciscaucasia, which is entirely located in the Russian Federation and which includes several autonomous regions, and the South Caucasus, called Transcaucasia, which includes 3 independent countries (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan).

The Caucasus is a very diverse region in which there are a dozen different ethnic groups and more than a hundred languages and dialects are still spoken there. There are major religions, especially the Christian and Muslim religions and a Jewish and Buddhist minority. It is a real ethnic, linguistic and cultural mosaic.

Review: 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson | Kate Manne

Review: 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson | Kate Manne:

Rule One is “Stand up straight with your shoulders back”, to avoid seeming like a “loser lobster”, who shrinks from conflict and grows sad, sickly and loveless – and is prone to keep on losing, which is portrayed as a disaster.

How to Clean Your Filthy, Disgusting Laptop - The New York Times

How to Clean Your Filthy, Disgusting Laptop - The New York Times:

Like any tool we use every day, our laptops accumulate dust, grime, oils from our skin and who knows what else. Yours is probably due for a cleaning, and here’s how to do it right.

Angels through the ages | The Spectator

Angels through the ages | The Spectator:

Angels are a tricky subject to tackle, being so nebulous and fleetingly glimpsed. I take my hat off to Stanford for having a go. The book has changed my life, as I now think about angels all the time and keep spotting them in paintings, on book jackets and in the verses of hymns. I’ve never read a book with so many winged figures, sudden encounters between humans and strange visions, angel-adorned gates, haloes, gowns, bare feet and moments on mountains when someone sees something dazzling in a dream. If you concentrate, you’ll be taken on a thrilling journey through theological discussion, with a generous helping of art history thrown in.

Stanford opens the book enticingly, telling us how his Catholic mother, who had multiple sclerosis, used to leave her wheelchair outside shops in Liverpool in the 1970s. His father would worry it might be stolen, but she’d reply: ‘Oh Reg, cheer up. My guardian angel is looking after it.’

The Divinely-Revealed Appearance of Angels in Icons | A Reader's Guide to Orthodox Icons

The Divinely-Revealed Appearance of Angels in Icons | A Reader's Guide to Orthodox Icons:

The word angel, used throughout the Bible, comes from the Greek word meaning messenger. The name reflects the nature of angels with regards to humans and God: i.e. they are messengers from God, sent to us. They are sometimes described as Bodiless Powers: bodiless meaning they are purely spirit, rather than material, and power meaning they have their own will and intellect, rather than being an aspect of God. This last part is important: angels are spirits, and “God is spirit” (John 4:24), but angels are still created beings in their own right.

Herbalist Who Told Diabetic Boy To Use Lavender Oil Instead Of Insulin Is Jailed For His Death | IFLScience

Herbalist Who Told Diabetic Boy To Use Lavender Oil Instead Of Insulin Is Jailed For His Death | IFLScience:

A herbalist who told a 13-year-old diabetic boy's family to rub lavender oil into his spine instead of using insulin has been jailed in California after the boy died from complications relating to type-1 diabetes.

Timothy Morrow, 84, was sentenced on Monday for practicing medicine without a license, as well as one count of child abuse likely to produce great bodily injury or death, to which he entered a no contest plea.

Believers without belief – TheTLS

Believers without belief – TheTLS:

According to conventional wisdom, religions are systems of belief. Religious people are “believers”. Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead; Muslims believe that Mohammed was the final prophet; Jews believe that the creator of the universe has a special affection for the children of Israel. These beliefs of the religious are often taken to be unsupported by, or even inconsistent with, available evidence. Indeed, many understand “faith” as a matter of believing without any evidence at all.

However, this belief-orientated – or “doxastic” – conception of religion is not universally accepted. According to the historian of religion Karen Armstrong, the doxastic conception of religion is a relatively recent development, shaped by the Protestant Reformation and the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century. Armstrong goes so far as to argue that our modern doxastic conception of religion is largely the result of mistranslation. In terms of Christianity, one difficulty with translating the Greek of the New Testament into English is that the English word “faith”, unlike the Greek equivalent “pistis”, does not have a verb form. Hence what should really be the verb “to faith” comes out as “to believe”. When the Bible was first rendered in English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this was not a bad translation. The word “bileven” in middle English meant to prize or to hold dear (related to the German “belieben”) and when the King James Bible was published, “believe” was close in meaning to the Greek pistis, which has connotations of engagement and commitment. As one piece of evidence for this, Armstrong offers a line from Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well (written shortly before the publication of the King James Bible) in which Bertram is urged to “believe not thy distain”; in other words, he is being told not to engage his contempt (in this case for the low-born Helena) and let it take root in his heart.

Organizing your family history research with Zotero - Organize Your Family History

Organizing your family history research with Zotero - Organize Your Family History:

Zotero is great for genealogy for all of these reasons and more:

• It is free, with the stability and support of a university backing it up.
• Even if you are syncing to the Zotero cloud, you can do that for years on free storage, before you have to buy some. And when you do buy storage, it’s inexpensive and unlimited.
  
• It provides the structure missing from tools like OneNote and EverNote, but brings substantial flexibility, along with the structure.
  
• It can add most catalogued online source citations to your Zotero library with one click.
  It can organize and provide one-click access to the thousands of documents, spreadsheets, photographs, and other files you have saved to your hard drive. In essence, it can draw all those files together into a uniform, organized system.
• Zotero becomes your door to all you have collected.
  It allows you to create a record once but to file it in as many folders as you want without taking up significant extra space. You make a change once, and it changes in every folder.
  
• You can find things rapidly, even if you only have vague memories of having long ago found a document that might be of use in solving a new genealogical problem.
  It will sync to the cloud, allowing you to access your work at Zotero.org, wherever you have Wifi access.

What is Orthodox Hell? | Eclectic Orthodoxy

What is Orthodox Hell? | Eclectic Orthodoxy:

What is the Orthodox doctrine of hell? I honestly do not know. I do know what many Orthodox have taught about hell during the past hundred years or so, and I know some�thing about what the Church Fathers taught about it during the first millennium of the Church’s history; but I cannot tell you what the Orthodox Church authoritatively and irreformably teaches about hell, beyond the fact that it is a horrifying possibility and therefore a destiny best avoided. As the Orthodox Church sings at the Saturday Vespers of the Sunday of the Last Judgment:

When the thrones are set in place and the books are opened, then God will take His place on the judgment-seat.
What a fearful sight! 
As the angels stand in awe and the river of fire flows by:
What shall we do, who are already condemned by our many sins, as we hear Christ call the righteous to His Father’s Kingdom, and send the wicked to eternal damnation? Who among us can bear that terrible verdict?
 Hasten to us, Lover of mankind and King of the universe: 
Grant us the grace of repentance before the end and have mercy on us!

The hymns of the Sunday of the Last Judgment might seem to give the definitive word, yet they, like the Scriptures, need to be interpreted in light of Pascha and the totality of the Holy Tradition.

Stigmata - Antsy's occasional creative writings

Stigmata - Antsy's occasional creative writings:

"Stigmata" came to me in a whoosh after percolating for almost 9 years following what might be called a religious experience towards Easter time. It's about my experience during a choir practise in Parksville BC in 1978, five months after Apartheid South Africa deliberately killed Bantu Steve Biko – the truly inspired and inspiring leader of the Black Consciousness Movement – whom I and so very many people loved.

Why Were Medieval Knights Often Pictured Fighting Giant Snails?

Why Were Medieval Knights Often Pictured Fighting Giant Snails?:

In 2013 a group of medievalists from Britain went into a store to look up medieval genealogical scrolls. During their visit they came across a late-13th century manuscript from England titled Royal MS 14 B V.

Scrolls and manuscripts dating back to the 13th and 14th century often contain broad margins and blank space that was filled with different notes and drawings done by the readers.

The scroll they stumbled upon was heavily loaded with marginalia. Among it all was a drawing of a knight fighting a snail.

Concentration camps in the South African War? Here are the real facts

Concentration camps in the South African War? Here are the real facts:

More than a century after 48 000 people died in concentration camps in what’s known as the South African War between 1899 and 1902 – or the Anglo-Boer War – the events of that period are back in the headlines.

The camps were established by the British as part of their military campaign against two small Afrikaner republics: the ZAR (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State.

The scandalous campaign is back in the news following controversial comments by British Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg on a BBC television programme.

11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting | Psychology Today

11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting | Psychology Today:

Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn't realize how much they've been brainwashed. For example, in the movie Gaslight (1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind.

All Conference Alerts 2019 | Conference Alerts | International Conference

All Conference Alerts 2019 | Conference Alerts | International Conference:

All Conference Alerts provides conference alerts and information regarding upcoming International Conferences to be held world wide. Academician and professionals can get their relevant updates and conference alerts through all conference alerts. Users can subscribe to get updates and conference alerts about upcoming international conferences at Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong as well as all major cities and countries across the world.

About - Ecclesiology & Ethnography Network

About - Ecclesiology & Ethnography Network:

Founded in 2007 by Pete Ward and Christian Scharen, the Network for Ecclesiology and Ethnography is a growing international network of scholars committed to the empirical and theological study of the Christian church. Since its inception, the network has hosted an annual conference in the UK at St. John’s College, Durham. After several years of conferences at Luther Seminary (St. Paul, MN), the network created the Ecclesial Practices Group at the American Academy of Religion (AAR), where its North American meetings now occur. In recent years, the Ecclesial Practices group has hosted multiple invited panels, calls for papers and workshops at the AAR. The network’s annual gathering in the US now happens in conjunction with the AAR Annual Meeting. The network has also regularly sponsored and supported conferences across Europe including past gatherings in Romania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Who Cares About Your Life Story? Why the Scope of the Memoir You’re Writing Matters |

Who Cares About Your Life Story? Why the Scope of the Memoir You’re Writing Matters |:

So, if you’re going to narrow the focus of your book, how will you decide what the focus will be?

Six Tanzanian children killed 'for body parts' - BBC News

Six Tanzanian children killed 'for body parts' - BBC News:

Six children in south-western Tanzania have been killed and had their ears and teeth removed, the authorities say.

Some of the bodies of the children, aged between two and nine years old, were also missing limbs.

"This is all about superstitious beliefs and many believe they will get help from witchcraft," Njombe District Commissioner Ruth Msafiri said.

Police have detained one suspect, a close relative of three of the children who were from the same family.

Ten children in all have gone missing in Njombe since the beginning of December and four have been found alive.

Six Tanzanian children killed 'for body parts' - BBC News

Six Tanzanian children killed 'for body parts' - BBC News:

Six children in south-western Tanzania have been killed and had their ears and teeth removed, the authorities say.

Some of the bodies of the children, aged between two and nine years old, were also missing limbs.

"This is all about superstitious beliefs and many believe they will get help from witchcraft," Njombe District Commissioner Ruth Msafiri said.

Police have detained one suspect, a close relative of three of the children who were from the same family.

Ten children in all have gone missing in Njombe since the beginning of December and four have been found alive.