While there are arguments against the afterlife, professor Fraser Watts notes that the portion of the population that believes in the afterlife has increased and experiential evidence may be enough to spark belief.
Taking a broad view of humanity, in different cultures and different epochs, most human beings have assumed there is an afterlife. Currently, the proportion of people believing in an afterlife is lower in Europe than in the United States, but it is still about half the population in most European countries. Strikingly, this proportion has increased during the last half century in both continents.
There seem to be two main ... read more
Jesse Bering looks into reasons why people believe in the afterlife despite "scientifically derived data" to the contrary
In my post yesterday, my intention was to show that asking whether human beings have a soul that ascends after their biological expiration (or descends, transmigrates, slumbers, hovers, recycles, take your culturally applicable pick) is a sure-fire way to keep a decadently vacuous debate burning. I’ve no illusions, of course, of making converts of the deeply religious. If this classification applies to you, then by the time you’re reading this, ... read more
To look further into the theme of the current magazine issue "Belief is back," the Faith Column will hear from writers on the afterlife. Jesse Bering discusses the concept of the afterlife from a psychological perspective.
When I first began conducting psychological research on people’s concepts of the afterlife, I’ll confess that I did so from the perspective of a sceptic. The idea that the soul could be liberated from the physical body at death, float off into the sky like a helium balloon, be plucked off by demons somehow able to get their claws into something that lacked a physical substance, or cleverly inveigle itself ... read more
In the last of our serious on blindness and faith, John Hull considers the divide between the sighted and unsighted world. He also questions Christ's relationship with the blind.
When I began to read the gospels after I became blind in my mid forties, I was worried to discover how very much Jesus was a sighted person. Given the assumptions of his society, this could hardly have been different, nevertheless the thought had not occurred to me when I was myself a sighted person.
Sighted people, for the most part, do not recognise themselves as sighted. What I mean ... read more
John Hull discusses negative images of blindness in the Bible and society and how these need to change.
I lost sight in middle life, and when I read the Bible again, as a blind person, it was very different.
In Matthew 23, for example, Jesus calls his opponents ‘blind fools’. Why not ‘ignorant fools’ or ‘stubborn fools’? Why use my state as a term of abuse? In John 9, the restoration of sight to the man born blind is clearly an allegory of a move from unbelief ... read more
In the second of his articles on life and faith as a deafblind priest, Cyril Axelrod explains how he now sees God through his senses of smell and touch.
Many years before I became totally blind, I used to love going for a long walk in the countryside and watching the wonders of nature – evergreen plants and trees, the wild world full of different colours, the placid lake with ducks swimming on it, the birds flying in the blue sky and so forth. I could not hear the sounds or songs, but I experienced that my sight was ... read more
This week we will look into deaf and blind faith and how faith is crucial in a deafblind person's life because it turns the unseen into the understood.
Being born deaf with good sight, I was very young in the 1950s. My kind-hearted Jewish father used to take me with him visiting different homes for the elderly and disabled people on Sundays. It always brought me wonder to witness their joy and faith even when they did not receive a visit from their families or friends.
It happened one day when my father decided to take me ... read more
Asha Pandey discusses the status of women in the Hindu faith. She tells the story of modern female guru Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi and how Nirmala Devi is helping to "reclaim the role of women in the spiritual evolution."
In Hinduism, women are considered a form of energy and are given due importance at every stage of life - as a daughter, as a daughter-in-law and as a mother. Out of these roles some come out as women gurus.
During the Vedic times we had seers and philosophers like Ghosha, Apala, Lopamudra, Vishwvara, Surya, Indrani, Yami and Romasha (all women). In a theosophical debate between Shankaracharya and Mandana ... read more
Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah, one of the first female rabbis in Britain, describes her journey from being under close scrutiny for being a woman rabbi to eventually being accepted by her congregation.
When I was ordained in July 1989, the Leo Baeck College graduating class of five ordinands included two women: the ninth and tenth female rabbis in Britain. The first female rabbi, Jacqueline Tabick, had been ordained in 1975. Meanwhile, in the United States, Sally Priesand, had become the first female rabbi in 1972.
But even before the new era of gender equality began to dawn in the 1970s, back in ... read more
The Faith Column this week will look into women who are given leadership roles in various faiths. Roman Catholic woman priest Marie Evans Bouclin describes why Catholics need priests who understand the "realities of ordinary life"
When bishop Patricia Fresen ordained me as a Roman Catholic woman priest, she perceived in me a call to minister to some of the most wounded women of the Church - women who had been sexually abused, as children or vulnerable adults, by a priest. For several years I had been giving lectures, workshops and retreats to survivors of abuse in the hope of finding with them pathways to healing ... read more
In the last of the columns on Opus Dei, Kristina Boskova describes how prayer helped her take the decision to become a Numerary – a celibate member of Opus Dei.
My dream was always to be a film director. I used to live in Elstree near the BBC Studios and thought the break-through would just happen one day! Nevertheless, I decided to study nursing! At the age of 19 I used to spend most of my time (and money) in the pub with my friends. All day Saturday and Sunday was spent shopping! It all got rather boring…
Then ... read more
Opus Dei member Olivia Darby stresses that members of Opus Dei are just like everybody else. She gives examples to try to dispel stereotypes that Opus Dei members are sinister superhumans.
If you have learned about Opus Dei from the media and Da Vinci Code, it is easy to believe that it is a shadowy sect, governed by some sinister Dr No type figure, high on power and attempting world domination.
I am a member of Opus Dei. I take the bus with you. I walk past you in the street. I might be behind you in the supermarket queue, and ... read more
A christian charity must be done by faith. Iam an Indian and iam Christian too. Faith through charity is a powerful.
From christian charity, 13 February 04:41
Still confusing to me. Isn't there a better, time tested way of escaping the chains of cultural poverty. An education, learning to speak in English sentences--using your given intellect to find...
From Harold Hatch, 27 January 21:48
@gnuneo, you your self might be in danger of over emphasising the 'individual' in New Age like leap of faith arising from phenomena that is far from understood.
From MG, 16 January 16:52
Can the UK achieve it’s commitment to carbon reduction targets by 2020?
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