God Will Research Articles

Adapting as complex problem solving: Shifting to new solutions in light of complex problems

What is a problem? Without people there would be no problems. Problems are most likely a conception of our mind. This means solutions are also determined by our conceptions that we can mould and adapt to suit our circumstances. For example, in considering reasonable solutions to world poverty, it needs to be firstly determined whether the situation is due to God's Will, Imperialism or a lack of Capitalism. Thus unstructured problem solving becomes a process of making explicit which conception of a problem is being used. This paper will re-present the argument that problems and their solutions are merely a conception of our brains and because of this we can change and adapt our thinking to match the evolving circumstances. The implications of this is found in the way we train people in problem solving, especially as we focus heavily on linearity and not complexity, as a method of explaining how people adapt their problem solving ability as part of a adaptive process. The paper concludes by arguing that this framework needs to be developed into a more formal process so that the ‘reality’ of problem solving is better understood. A small illustration of adaptive problem solving is included to help understand the concept.

Morality and the movies: reading ethics through film

Introduction: Studying Philosophy Through Film 1. Submission to God's Will in A Man for All Seasons 2. Egoism and Utilitarianism in Casablanca 3. Legal Conventionalism in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence 4. Kant's Man of Good Will and Hotel Rwanda 5. Moral Relativism, Perspectivism and Citizen Kane 6. Virtue Ethics and Ghost Dog 7. Freedom and Determinism in A Clockwork Orange 8. Sexual Morality and Kinsey 9. Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia and The Sea Inside 10. Capital Punishment and Compassion in Dead Man Walking 11. The morality and meaning of war in Full Metal Jacket 12. Autonomy and Abortion Rights in The Cider House Rules 13. Gun Control and Bowling for Columbine 14. Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Munich 15. Business Ethics and Wall Street 16. Affirmative Action, Diversity and Remember the Titans Conclusion: How Films can Elucidate Philosophies, and Vice Versa Further Reading Index.

Book Review: Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups

Book Review: Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups

Cultural Diversity and Views on Alzheimer Disease in Older African Americans

Cultural constructs prevalent in older African Americans may influence their risk perceptions and knowledge of Alzheimer disease (AD). To examine this issue, we administered 3 sociocultural scales, the AD Knowledge Scale, and a Risk Perception questionnaire to 271 older African Americans who were recruited from a large community senior center and local churches. Higher Present Time Orientation was significantly related to perceptions of having little control over risks to health (P=0.004), God's Will in determining AD (P=0.001), and lower AD knowledge (P<0.0001) and marginally related to having little control over developing AD (P=0.052). Religiosity was marginally related to having little control over risks to health (P=0.055) and getting AD (P=0.057). Post hoc intergroup comparisons found significant differences in the highest versus lowest scoring Religiosity groups. There were no significant differences by Future Time Orientation. Most subjects (57.6%) were unaware that African Americans were at higher risk for AD than whites. These data indicate that cultural diversity within older African Americans may shape health perceptions and knowledge of AD. This diversity may contribute to disparities in the detection and treatment of AD in this high-risk population.

A Method for Communal Discernment of God's Will

A Method for Communal Discernment of God's Will

Ben Sira, the Genesis Creation Accounts, and the Knowledge of God's Will

Ben Sira renarrates the story of creation and the primal sin of humanity found in Genesis 2–3 in a striking and provocative fashion. He elides the story of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and instead insists that the human is created with the full knowledge of good and evil. In a bold collapsing of creation and the giving of the law at Sinai, Ben Sira even suggests that God makes the law available to the human. What seems to be at stake for Ben Sira is establishing forcefully that there is no basis for claiming that in creation God left the human without crucial knowledge of any part of God’s will as expressed in the law. Ben Sira may well be aware of sectarian claims to exclusive divine revelation that are legitimated by interpretations of the Genesis creation accounts. The Dead Sea Scroll wisdom text known as 4QInstruction provides an example of the sort of exclusivist religious epistemology that Ben Sira is seeking to refute.

Funeral Music and the Transformation of Southern Musical and Religious Cultures, 1935-1945

William Leonard Bivens was a thirty-year-old foreman at Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Memphis when he suffered a heart attack and died in June 1944. Bivens left a wife and son who chose the National Funeral Home, a funeral home for whites, to provide the funeral service and then bury him. On its ledger, the funeral home listed the music to be played. During the service, the organist was to play two hymns, Sunrise Tomorrow and God Will Take Care of Thee. The prelude was to be Old Rugged Cross, a Broadman Hymnal (Southern Baptist) standard made famous in the early twentieth century by evangelist Billy Sunday, and the postlude was Brahms's Lullaby. 1 The musical pr ogram performed at Bivens's funeral was emblematic of fundamental changes in Southern funeral music: from 1935 (the begin- ning of the funeral home's records) to about 1943, customers who buried their kin from the National Funeral Home requested rural hymns, songs such as Old Rugged Cross and Sunrise Tomorrow. 2 But in 1943, a shift began that became far more pronounced in 1944 when the funeral home's organists began to perform western art music such as Brahms's Lullaby, Chopin's famous death march from his Piano Sonata no. 2, and Massenet's Meditation from Thais. Intriguingly, organists did not stop performing Old Rugged Cross; instead, they mixed European music from the cul-

God Will Judge Each One according to Works: Judgment According to Works and Psalm 62 in Early Judaism and the New Testament. BZNW 178

God Will Judge Each One according to Works: Judgment According to Works and Psalm 62 in Early Judaism and the New Testament. BZNW 178

Santorum and God's Will: The Religionization of Politics and the Tyranny of Totalitarianism

The possibility of an authoritarian and ethically dysfunctional family in the White House in 2013 certainly has caught the attention of a number of liberals and other progressives. After all, what progressive or decent conservative for that matter would support Rick Santorum’s rejection of the separation of church and state or his belief that it is better to live under the rule of a theocratic state than in a democracy? Of course, religious fanatics do not ponder these issues seriously because they get their information straight from God. One example comes from Rick’s wife, Karen, who told conservative talk show host Glenn Beck that it was ‘God’s will’ that her husband is running for president and that she felt that ‘God had big plans for Rick’.[1] And, of course, Santorum has no trouble doubting his wife because he believes that the ultimate confrontation between good and evil is akin to a religious crusade and he is the man to lead it. After all, Santorum, as he has stated publicly many times, is on a moral crusade to snuff out the work of Satan in a variety of areas extending from higher education to health care and women’s reproductive rights. For many moderate conservatives such as Rudy Giuliani, the likes of Santorum, Gingrich, Perry and Bachmann represent the flight of the current Republican Party from the real world. For Giuliani, the party has become anti-modernist. For Ed Rollins, a CNN regular and Republican Party strategist, the party has fatally turned itself into the party of Wall Street and country clubber, leading it to eventual extinction. Liberals such as Maureen Dowd and Robert Reich view the Republican leadership as either ‘barking mad’ or simply loony. As Reich points out, this is a party ‘of birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti-intellectuals, and out of touch country clubbers [who] cannot govern America’.[2] Of course, there is a semblance of truth in all of these positions, especially in the recognition that politicians such as Rick Santorum represent a clear and present danger to promise of a real democracy in the United States. At the same time, terms such as loony, out of touch, anti-modernist, and the politicization of religion, while offering a categorical referent that highlights the extremism and fundamentalism that drives the ideological views of such candidates, run the risk of reinforcing a fatal psychologizing or a dead-end collapse into a narrow definition of religious fanaticism. Something far more serious and dangerous is unfolding in this current presidential election than the politicization of religion, a politics free from doubt, or the emergence of the loony squad. As Zygmunt Bauman points out in a different context:

Why Not Now? Karlstadt's Whether We Should Proceed Slowly and Avoid Offending the Weak in Matters that Concern God's Will (1524)

Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt's Whether We Should Proceed Slowly [Ob man gemach faren soll] in 1524 was no best seller, and the work is often overlooked today. However, its author was a prolific publisher, especially of German tracts, in the early sixteenth century. His influence upon other so-called radical reformers remains yet to be measured adequately. Despite the fact that Gemach was written shortly before Karlstadt's expulsion from Electoral Saxony, its thesis resonated strongly with other writers who were disenchanted with the trajectory of reforms in Wittenberg after 1522. A careful analysis of Karlstadt's argumentation reveals a rigorous reliance upon Old Testament texts, and it represents the development of a position that holds the Christian congregation responsible for implementing reforms in worship that are mandated in God's commands. As Karlstadt's response to Luther's Invocavit Sermons (preached in March 1522 and published outside Wittenberg in 1523), Gemach shows what Gordon Rupp called Karlstadt's ‘best polemical writing.'

“The Gospel Has Always Been Disturbing”: The Centrality of “God's Will” to the Cold War Political Activism of the Reverends Frank Hartley and Alfred Dickie

Religious faith was pivotal to the personal ideologies and radical political activism of the Reverends Alf Dickie and Frank Hartley, both of whom were prominent in the Australian peace movement from 1949 until the early seventies. This article examines Dickie's and Hartley's self-identification as prophets in the context of the optimism of the post-war era and its subsequent retreat as the Cold War altered the political climate. It examines how their post-war political activism was framed by a devout faith in the existence of an objective truth with regard to the Cold War, a truth based on a self-styled notion of the Will of God. Further, it argues that suffering was understood by these self-declared prophets to be inherent to their mission and was thus embraced, when ostensibly visited upon them, as an affirmation of the righteousness of their cause. For Dickie and Hartley, an active association with the radical Left was a natural expression of God's Will.

The Iran-Iraq War: A Reassessment

The Iran-Iraq war remains one of the longest conflicts in the history of the modern Middle East. The war would define Iran's foreign policy orientation, as the exigencies of the conflict conditioned its approach to the United States, the Arab world, and even Israel. Along the way, Iran's leaders made a series of mistakes and miscalculations that ensured a stalemated conflict. Subordinating strategy to ideology and misplaced hopes that Iraq's population would rise to welcome Iranians as liberators contributed to prolonging a devastating war. This year will mark the 30th anniversary of one of the most important and peculiar conflicts in the history of modern Middle East, the Iran-Iraq war. The Islamic Republic of Iran's ritual celebration of its martyrs obscures a more deliberate and dispassionate assessment of the conflict. Iran fought the war with remarkable disadvantages, as it lacked reliable allies, a dependable supply of arms, and superpower goodwill. Along the way, Iranian leaders perceived that they would be welcomed as liberators and believed that no detailed occupation policy was necessary. Still, the regime's ability to sustain an eight-year conflict reflected its resilience and ability to mobilize society and consolidate its power under duress. The state that was often viewed as a passing and transient phenomenon proved that it could deal with domestic challenges and international isolation while waging a total war. Iran's conduct in the war reflected its militancy and revolutionary fervor. This was not an interstate conflict fought for territorial adjustment or limited political objectives. At stake was a contest of ideologies and a competition for power. The clerics whose revolution had succeeded against great odds assumed that spiritual valor would compensate for Iraq's technological edge. Military planning and issues of strategy and tactics were cast aside for the sake of martyrdom and sacrifice. The war and revolution had somehow fused in the clerical imagination. To wage the war was a way of demonstrating one's commitment to the divine mission launched by the Imam Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979. In one of the paradoxes of Iran, the war that Ayatollah Khomeini hoped would realize his ideological values ended up undermining the transnational mission of the state. After an inconclusive but costly struggle, Iran failed to defeat Iraq, transform the Middle East, or project its Islamist template beyond its boundaries. The Islamic Republic would now have to rest its legitimacy on factors other than its religious imperatives or revolutionary aspirations. A state that had so long resisted mundane considerations uneasily became another government preoccupied with providing services to its constituents and achieving its objectives within the prevailing international system. Redemption of God's Will On September 22, 1980, Saddam Husayn made the catastrophic decision to launch an invasion of Iran. The persistent border clashes, Iran's propaganda campaigns, and Saddam's opportunism finally led the Iraqi strongman to provoke one of the longest conflicts in the annals of the modern Middle East. Iraq's invasion initially scored impressive gains, as the city of Khurramshahr fell and the important industrial cities of Abadan and Ahvaz were besieged and isolated. Saddam flamboyantly proclaimed his desire to fight until every inch of usurped land was restored to Arab control, an unsubtle claim on the oil-rich Khuzistan province.1 Nonetheless, Saddam's ambitions outstripped his military acumen, as his forces soon encountered logistical difficulties resulting from poor planning and unexpectedly stiff Iranian resistance. Even at the early stages of the conflict, Saddam's misjudgments were becoming obvious, as the notion of Iraq's battlefield successes leading to a mass uprising grossly misunderstood the mood of the Iranian people. Moreover, the notion that a revolutionary regime claiming to be in command of a new epoch would quickly cede vast portions of its territory and resettle itself in a truncated terrain was a misperception of how militant leaders behave during times of national crisis. …

God's Will or God's Desires for US: A Change in Worldview?

Taking up the mystery of divine providence, the author suggests that the terms “God's will” and “God's desires” correspond to different understandings of the God-world and God-human relationship. In the former, the focus seems to be on the fulfilment of the unchanging divine plan for creation; in the latter, attention is directed to the strictly contingent decisions of creatures and God's flexibility in somehow ordering them to a higher purpose and goal. Divine providence is active in both cases but in quite different ways.

“God Will Heal My Foot”: Evaluating Religious Aspects of Medical Decision-Making

Objectives 1. Develop strategies for discussing medical decision-making with patients and families who are hoping for a miracle. 2. Discuss ways to ease the burden of family members who must make difficult decisions on behalf of the patient. Mrs. S was a 74-year-old African American woman with a history of diabetes and limited adherence to medical treatment. She was admitted to the hospital with a gangrenous foot from an untreated diabetic ulcer. Despite intravenous antibiotics, the infection progressed, and the surgeons advised her that the only treatment that would save her life would be amputation. However, the patient refused, saying, ‘‘God will heal my foot.’’ The palliative medicine service was consulted to help the patient and family decide if hospice care would be appropriate. Our discussion with Mrs. S revealed that she did believe that God does work through medical treatment and doctors. She was willing to take medications to treat the infection, but to her, amputation would be against God’s will. She did not want to die and did not think she would die if she refused amputation. To Mrs. S, God’s physical healing of her gangrenous foot was not just a miracle to be prayed for, but a certainty. She would not explain further or entertain the possibility that the healing might not take place. Psychiatry assessed that her capacity to understand the consequences of her decision was limited. Mrs. S’s stance was consistent with her previous decision-making, reliance on religious faith, and avoidance of medical procedures. Four years previously, Mrs. S had refused an amputation for the same reasons, and her daughter had signed consent. Since then, the patient had seemed content to be mobile in wheelchair and enjoyed living with her daughter’s large family. She expressed no resentment against her daughter. However, the patient’s daughter had been haunted by guilt about her decision to go against her mother’s wishes. It was uncertain if Mrs. S would fare as well with both legs amputated, especially as her overall medical condition had worsened.

God's Will and Human Remembrance: A Study on Death in Confucianism and Christianity

God's Will and Human Remembrance: A Study on Death in Confucianism and Christianity

Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God's Will in Tudor England – By Daniel Eppley

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 35, Issue 4 p. 294-294 Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God's Will in Tudor England – By Daniel Eppley Torrance Kirby, Torrance Kirby McGill UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Torrance Kirby, Torrance Kirby McGill UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 November 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-0922.2009.01387_87.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume35, Issue4December 2009Pages 294-294 RelatedInformation

Convinced That God Had Called Us: Dreams, Visions, and the Perception of God's Will in Luke‐Acts – By John B. F. Miller

Convinced That God Had Called Us: Dreams, Visions, and the Perception of God's Will in Luke‐Acts – By John B. F. Miller

Daniel Eppley. Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God's Will in Tudor England. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Pp. 243. $99.95 (cloth).

Daniel Eppley. Defending Royal Supremacy and Discerning God's Will in Tudor England. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Pp. 243. $99.95 (cloth).

God Will Recognize His Own. Religious (Dis)orientations of Ethiopians Jews in Israel

L’emigration massive en Israel ces dernieres decennies de la communaute juive d’Ethiopie se realisa au prix d’une condition de taille : l’abandon de sa liturgie, jugee trop singuliere, au profit d’un judaisme plus normatif. Des siecles de rites pratiques sur les hauts plateaux d’Abyssinie etaient ainsi condamnes a disparaitre. Passee la premiere generation de migrants, preoccupee par son adaptation a une nouvelle langue et a une nouvelle culture, les personnes nees sur le sol israelien composent a present la majorite de cette population. Si la question de l’identite juive de cette communaute ne se pose plus, celle de son identification a un rite specifique, cherchant sa voie entre le monde d’hier et celui d’aujourd’hui, reste d’actualite.

Cover Note

Cover Note Dathalinn O'Dea (bio) Front Cover Dorothy Cross. Close Your Eyes and Open Your Mouth and See What God Will Give You (1995-96). Gelatin silver photographic prints. Used by permission of Dorothy Cross. [View Cover Image] The photographs of children's faces that comprise Éire-Ireland's cover image suggest the range of attitudes toward and representations of Irish childhood addressed in this issue. Taken from a larger installation by Dorothy Cross (b. 1956) entitled Close Your Eyes and Open Your Mouth and See What God Will Give You, the prints capture an array of reactions—anticipation, reverence, humor, patience, innocence, trepidation—and they invoke just as many responses in the viewer. The children's open mouths awaiting Communion—mouths that demand our attention despite the implied silence of the faces—first arrest our gaze. Suggestions of a grin are evident on one girl's face, while one of the boys might as easily have been caught laughing as waiting to receive the Host. But any such implied humor seems undercut by the reverential quality of the imagery. Several of the children's faces are serene, with eyes closed gently and trusting heads tilted back expectantly. Still other children evince some uneasiness; one boy's mouth is partly obscured by his tongue, his right eye squeezed tightly shut and his face contorted into what might, in another context, be read as a grimace. Viewed collectively, these children's faces convey both deference and humor, desire and [End Page 291] apprehension—rather than simple pleasure. The photographs and Cross's caption for them, particularly for those viewers familiar with this Irish artist's iconoclastic and witty sculptures and site-specific installations, deliberately unsettle the religious ideology to which they refer.1 As in so many of her other works, Cross's photographs challenge the conventions and institutions of a traditional Irish national identity. The images comprising Close Your Eyes and Open Your Mouth and See What God Will Give You resist a simple religious, political, or pedagogical interpretation, instead opening themselves to expansive and potentially disturbing readings by contemporary viewers. Like Dorothy Cross, the contributors to this issue approach the study of Irish childhood through many lenses—literary, sociological, and historical—and across different periods. Echoing her photographs, their articles depict a subject at once playful and insistent—a subject calling for further critical attention just as Cross's images, offered to viewers in 1995-96, after the trusting relationship between the Irish Church and Irish children had been undermined, demand a closer look. [End Page 292] Dathalinn O'Dea Dathalinn M. O'Dea is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Boston College with a speciality in Irish Studies. Her interests include nineteenth and twentieth-century Irish literature, postcolonial studies, and Anglo-American modernism. In particular, she is interested in representations of the city and Ireland's print culture during the first half of the twentieth century. Currently, she is researching Ireland's little modernist magazines, specifically how they register and respond to Irish politics even as they showcase innovative writing. Footnotes 1. For example, titles of some of Cross's most striking installations include Caught in a State (1991), La Primera Cena [The First Supper] (1992), and Virgin Shroud (1993). For an analysis and images of the artist's site-specific work, see Robin Lydenberg, GONE: Site-Specific Works by Dorothy Cross (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). See also Lydenberg's articles on Cross's art in previous issues of Éire-Ireland, including "Contemporary Irish Art on the Move: At Home and Abroad with Dorothy Cross," Éire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies 39, nos. 3-4 (Fall/Winter 2004): 144-66. Copyright © 2009 Irish American Cultural Institute