Elder Philotheos Zervakos On Today's Theologians

Elder Philotheos Zervakos said:

"Today I see many learned Theologians and Scientists, but one Basil the Great, one Gregory the Theologian, one divine Chrysostom, one Athanasius the Great I do not see. Those ever-memorable and all-honorable Fathers were not praised so much for their erudite education, as much as for their virtues. Do you currently exclude the possibility for one today from becoming great and wondrous and virtuous? Or maybe God today does not give His Grace like He did in the olden days? No. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He gives His Grace to the strugglers and the contenders."

From New Gerontikon (Greek) by Presbyter Dionysios Tatsis. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.

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Super-Rich Spiritual Gurus of India

March 27, 2012

SiliconeIndia

In today’s profane world the Indian gurus or in other words “miracle workers” who are often referred as “godmen,” have more of a celebrity image with their savvy, powerful figures who control vast business empires and own enormous wealth they also dabble in politics and manipulate the media.

These modern day Gurus are not only renowned but they also possess a lot of wealth through NGO and private funds. Some prominent ones who have passed away cannot be missed, like Sathya Sai Baba who died recently could count more followers than any other Indian guru, and the financial worth of his spiritual empire is several times bigger. Sai Baba reportedly had wealth of over more than Rs 40,000 crore.

Here are 5 super-rich Indian gurus who own vast business empire.

Baba Ramdev

‘Yoga Guru’ Baba Ramdev gained popularity through ventures in yoga, alternative medicine and agriculture, as well as his advocacy on Indian political issues. His life is no less than a typical bollywood movie. He was born in a poor farmer's family in Haryana and until 15 years back Ramdev was a struggling man who was often seen on the streets of Haridwar, peddling his bicycle as he went to temples and people's homes to teach them yajnas. Later through his knowledge of yoga asanas Baba Ramdev went on to build an enviable Rs 1,100 crore empire.

He was also among the first to raise the issue of black money publicly in 2008 and before the assembly elections of 2009 it was during this time he officially announced his wealth of Rs 1,100 crore but according to tehelka.com t is said he controls over Rs 11,000 crore

Wealthy Assests: Patanjali Yogpeeth and Divya Yogi Mandir trusts and other branches, Patanjali Ayurved College, Patanjali Chikitsalaya, Yog Gram, Goshala, Patanjali Food And Herbal Park, etc. His empire today consists of over three dozen companies.

Mata Amritanandamayi

Sudhamani Idamannel, also known as Mata Amritanandamayi Devi and Amma ("Mother"), the Hindu spiritual leader and teacher, who is revered as a saint by her followers. Amritanandamayi spontaneously embraces people to comfort them in their sorrow and therefore is also referred to as "The Hugging Saint." She has hugged close to 30 million people to date, she is widely respected for her humanitarian activities and is probably by far the richest godwoman in the country.

Main Source of Income: Amrita Viswa Vidyapeetham colleges, Amrita Institute of Medical Science (Kochi), Amrita Schools, TV channel. Amrita Schools are located across Kerala where students are charged the same fee as topnotch private schools. Adding to it are the contributions from her millions of Indian and foreign devotees.

Even by modest estimates, the Amritanandamayi Trust, which presides over, is said to have assets worth over Rs 1,500 crore. Today, her ashram at her native Vallikavu, a small island off Kollam, is a posh five-storey building.

Sri Sri Ravishankar

Sri Sri Ravishankar is a renowned spiritual leader, known worldwide. He is the founder of the very famous Art of Living foundation that has an estimated 300 million followers in 151 countries who donate millions to this foundation. He was born in Tamil Nadu and took up Vedic studies when he was just six years old and by the age of 17, he had completed studies in Vedic literature and science according to indiatoday.in

Main Source of Income: Art of Living Centre (Bangalore), Sri Sri Shankar Vidya Mandir Trust, PU College (Bangalore), Sri Sri Centre for Media Studies (Bangalore), Sri Sri University, Art of Living Health & Educational Trust (US), etc.

It is estimated that, he has built an empire with that has total turnover of approximately Rs 1,000 crore that includes his Art of Living (AOL) institutes, pharmacy and health centres, and a hill 40 km from Bangalore on lease from the Karnataka government for 99 years.

Asaram Bapu

Sant Shri Asharam Ji Bapu is endearingly known as Bapu among all the godmen and self proclaimed saints mentioned above Asaram Bapu is one of the most controversial. He is accused of land grabbing in Gujarat and various other cities and is busy settling the string of cases charged against him. There have also been rumors of "sinister activities" at his ashrams, after four children were found dead at his ashrams a couple of months ago and though it turned out that a student had killed them, it was bad publicity for the Godman nonetheless.

His most popular and well established asharam Motera in Ahmedabad, is also said to be built on land acquired illegally. The trust headed by the controversial godman owns more than 350 ashrams in the country and abroad, besides 17,000 Bal Sanskar Kendras.

Asaram Bapu’s trust is said to have turnover Rs 350 crore according to official announcement (figures may vary) which includes the multicrore controversial ashram in Delhi’s Ridge area.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim

Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insaan is the current leader of an organization called Dera Sacha Sauda. Since becoming the head of this sect, he has often been involved in controversy, even having criminal cases filed against him. The Dera Sacha Sauda was established by Shah Mastana Ji from Baluchistan in 1948, as a centre for spiritual learning.

Assets: Over 700 acres of agriculture land in Sirsa, a 175- bed hospital in Ganganagar, Rajasthan, gas stations, market complexes and over 250 ashrams across the globe. Although his income isn’t revealed officially but he considered to be one among the richest gurus

Ram Rahim the Dera chief is accused of murder, rape and sexual harassment The most damaging allegation as yet on Baba Ram Rahim is of a female follower's letter anonymously sent to Prime Minister, President which claimed that Baba Ram Rahim had allegedly raped her and at least 50 more female followers in the Dera Sacha Sauda premises. This Baba is currently out on bail, he is being investigated by the CBI and trial is on before a special CBI court at Ambala.

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Doomsday Shelter Being Built Below Kansas Prairie

The 'Doomsday shelter' being built below Kansas prairie where millionaires will be able to sit out the Apocalypse in style.

Four buyers have already invested in condos below the ground.

Fears range from pandemics, terrorism and solar flares.

Indoor farm to provide fish and vegetables for 70 people for as long as necessary.

Eddie Wrenn

April 10, 2012

Dailymail.co.uk

When you buy a house, you end up feeling like you will be paying it off until the world ends.

Well, how about one of these luxurious condos, which come with all the mod-cons, as well as a pool, a movie theater and a library - oh, and a guarantee that it will survive Doomsday if and when that fateful day comes.

For these luxury flats, deep below the Kansas prairie in the shaft of an abandoned missile silo, are meant to withstand everything from economic collapse and solar flares to terrorist attacks and pandemics.

Naturally, there will be no one around to phone if the guarantee fails - but at that point, the insurance will probably be the least of your worries.

So far, four buyers have thrown down a total of about $7million (£4.4m) for havens to flee to when disaster happens or the end is nigh. And developer Larry Hall has options to retro-fit three more Cold War-era silos when this one fills up.

Hall said: 'They worry about events ranging from solar flares, to economic collapse, to pandemics to terrorism to food shortages.'

These 'doomsday preppers', as they are called, want a safe place and he will be there with them because Hall, 55, bought one of the condos for himself. He says his fear is that sun flares could wipe out the power grid and cause chaos.

He and his wife and son live in Denver and will use their condo mostly as a vacation home, he says, but if the grid goes, they will be ready.

Hall isn't the first person to buy an abandoned nuclear missile silo and transform at least part of it into a shelter.

Built to withstand an atomic blast, even the most paranoid can find comfort inside concrete walls that are nine feet thick and stretch 174 feet (53 meters) underground.

Instead of simply setting up shop in the old living quarters provided for missile operators, Hall is building condos right up the missile shaft.

Seven of the 14 underground floors will be condo space selling for $2 million a floor or $1 million a half floor. Three and a half units have been sold, two contracts are pending and only two more full units are available, Hall said.

For now, metal stairs stretch down to connect each floor but an elevator will later replace them. The units are within a steel and concrete core inside the original thick concrete, which makes them better able to withstand earthquakes.

Hall is also installing an indoor farm to grow enough fish and vegetables to feed 70 people for as long as they need to stay inside and also stockpiling enough dry goods to feed them for five years.

The top floor and an outside building above it will be for elaborate security.

Other floors will be for a pool, a movie theater and a library, and when in lockdown mode there will be floors for a medical center and a school.

Complex life support systems provide energy supplies from sources of conventional power, as well as windmill power and generators.

Giant underground water tanks will hold water pre-filtered through carbon and sand. And, of course, an elaborate security system and staff will keep marauding hordes out.

The condo elevator will only operate if a person's fingerprint matches its system, Hall said. Cameras will monitor a barbed-wire topped fence and give plenty of warning of possible intruders. Responses can range from a warning to lethal force.

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A Russian Study of the Holy Light of Jerusalem

February 17, 2009

The results of the scientific experiment, which took place on Holy Saturday in 2008 in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre of the Lord Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, have been announced at the conference “Science and Christianity” of the XVII Christmas educational readings in Moscow, last Tuesday.

The director of the sector of the Nuclear Energy Institute “Kurchatov”, candidate of physical-mathematical science Andrei Volkov, spoke about his attempt to measure the low-frequency long-wave radio signals appearing at the Jerusalem Church of the Holy Sepulchre of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the time of occurrence of the Holy Fire, which is happening every year at Holy Saturday.

Using special scientific equipment, the scientists have performed several measuring in the church, while in the period of 6.5 hours waiting for the occurrence of the Holy Fire, and in the next months he worked at the decoding of such measuring.

Andrei Volkov considers as an ”absolute miracle” the difference in indexes measured at the day of the Holy Fire occurrence and those from the day before. Beside this, according to his words, “the analyses of the fissures on the pillars of the temple just before the occurrence of the Holy Fire in the temple, indeed leads to the conclusion that such fissures could appear only as a result of the effect of electric charge.”

His colleague Evgeniy Morozov, who is the most famous specialist in the world in mechanics, discusses the same matter, as well.

Declaring that “from the scientific point of view, the only one measuring made, can’t prove anything credible yet”, Andrei Volkov at the same time stated that he is ready to take the full responsibility for the results obtained, and his readiness to publish them.

“Anyway, if you ask me for a scientific answer was it or was it not a miracle I will certainly tell you – I don’t know” – added Mr. Volkov.

Professor of the Moscow Russian Orthodox University “St. John the Theologian” Alexander Moskovskiy, who was for some time deputy president of the Commission for studying miraculous phenomena stated that Andrei Volkov “has made a scientific accomplishment, performing the first serious, credible and responsible scientific measuring of the Holy Fire in the whole of history.”

The Holy Fire occurs for centuries, in the Eve of the Orthodox Easter in the Temple of the Holy Tomb of the Lord Jesus Christ in Jerusalem. Orthodox Christians are persuaded that the miracle of the Holy Fire convincingly witnesses the credibility of the Orthodox Religion, moreover, taking the fact that in the whole history of the Church, not one feast of Resurrection has passed without the Holy Fire appearance. The occurrence of the Holy Fire itself denies any atheistic standpoint – consider the Orthodox believers.

Source

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Mathematics of Eternity Prove The Universe Must Have Had A Beginning

Cosmologists use the mathematical properties of eternity to show that although universe may last forever, it must have had a beginning.

April 24, 2012

Technology Review

The Big Bang has become part of popular culture since the phrase was coined by the maverick physicist Fred Hoyle in the 1940s. That's hardly surprising for an event that represents the ultimate birth of everything.

However, Hoyle much preferred a different model of the cosmos: a steady state universe with no beginning or end, that stretches infinitely into the past and the future. That idea never really took off.

In recent years, however, cosmologists have begun to study a number of new ideas that have similar properties. Curiously, these ideas are not necessarily at odds with the notion of a Big Bang.

For instance, one idea is that the universe is cyclical with big bangs followed by big crunches followed by big bangs in an infinite cycle.

Another is the notion of eternal inflation in which different parts of the universe expand and contract at different rates. These regions can be thought of as different universes in a giant multiverse.

So although we seem to live in an inflating cosmos, other universes may be very different. And while our universe may look as if it has a beginning, the multiverse need not have a beginning.

Then there is the idea of an emergent universe which exists as a kind of seed for eternity and then suddenly expands.

So these modern cosmologies suggest that the observational evidence of an expanding universe is consistent with a cosmos with no beginning or end. That may be set to change.

Today, Audrey Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin at Tufts University in Massachusetts say that these models are mathematically incompatible with an eternal past. Indeed, their analysis suggests that these three models of the universe must have had a beginning too.

Their argument focuses on the mathematical properties of eternity--a universe with no beginning and no end. Such a universe must contain trajectories that stretch infinitely into the past.

However, Mithani and Vilenkin point to a proof dating from 2003 that these kind of past trajectories cannot be infinite if they are part of a universe that expands in a specific way.

They go on to show that cyclical universes and universes of eternal inflation both expand in this way. So they cannot be eternal in the past and must therefore have had a beginning. "Although inflation may be eternal in the future, it cannot be extended indefinitely to the past," they say.

They treat the emergent model of the universe differently, showing that although it may seem stable from a classical point of view, it is unstable from a quantum mechanical point of view. "A simple emergent universe model...cannot escape quantum collapse," they say.

The conclusion is inescapable. "None of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal," say Mithani and Vilenkin.

Since the observational evidence is that our universe is expanding, then it must also have been born in the past. A profound conclusion (albeit the same one that lead to the idea of the big bang in the first place).

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1204.4658: Did The Universe Have A Beginning?

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A Miracle of Saint George in 1940

When Greeks fought against the Italians in Albania in 1940, after they had attacked us without any reason, the following miracle occurred.

Soldiers arrested together with other Italians an officer whom they held hostage. The Greek soldiers took away his pistol, binoculars etc. The Italian officer delivered them all happily. He even gave the photos of his family. A small icon of Saint George however he did not want to give up under any circumstance.

Eventually it was taken. Then the Italian hostage asked to see the Governor. When he met him he spoke graciously and asked for the icon of Saint George to be returned to him.

"This is Orthodox, what do you, a Papist, want with it?" asked the Governor.

"When I was driving my battalion against the Greeks," responded the Italian hostage, "I could not break their lines under any condition. And this was because I saw running back and forth along the front lines a Cavalier riding a white horse. He barred our path. He would not let us move forward. When we retreated we came to a place where we found a deserted little church. I went in to pray, and there on the screen I saw this small icon. His face was exactly as I saw him! It was him, the Saint with the white horse who was preventing us from moving forward into Greece. Then I took this icon with me and from that time I have kept it as a protection on me. I ask you to please release it to me."

And indeed, they released it to him.

Translated by John Sanidopoulos

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Documentary: The Guardians of the Holy Sepulchre (Greek)

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The Risen Christ, A Test of Logic

By Photios Kontoglou

A Christian's faith is tested with the Resurrection of Christ as gold in the furnace. Of the entire Gospel, the Resurrection of Christ is the most unbelievable thing, totally incomprehensible logically, a true torture for it. But because it is a thing altogether incredible, this is why our whole faith is needed to believe it. We humans often say that we have faith, but we only have it for what is believed by the mind. But then there is no need for faith, since logic is enough. Belief is needed for the unbelievable.

Most people are faithless. The very disciples of Christ did not have faith in the words of their Teacher whenever He said that He would be raised, despite all the respect and loyalty they had for Him and the trust they had in His words. And when the Myrrhbearers in the morning went to the tomb of Christ, they saw two angels who spoke, saying that He rose, and they ran to tell the joyful news to the disciples, but they did not believe their words, having the idea that it was in their fantasies: "But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense" (Lk. 24:11).

Do you see with what faithlessness Christ Himself had to struggle with? And from His own disciples. You see with what long-suffering He endured everything? And with all this, till now most of us are separated from Christ by a cold wall, the wall of unbelief. He opens to us His arms and invites us, but we deny Him. He shows us the pierced hands and feet, and we say that we don't see them. We are looking to find support for our belief to satisfy our ego, with what is called Philosophy and Science. The word "Resurrection" does not fit into the books of our knowledge.

Yes, those who have this blessed simplicity of intellect, the Lord blessed, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall they shall see God." And Thomas, who sought to touch Him in order to believe, said: "Because you have seen Thomas, you believe? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

Let us ask the Lord to give us this rich poverty and pure heart to see Him risen that we may also rise with Him.

This ignorance is superior to knowledge. Of good fortune three times over are those who have it.

Christ is Risen!

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos

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Near Death, Explained

New science is shedding light on what really happens during out-of-body experiences -- with shocking results.

By Mario Beauregard

April 21, 2012

Salon

In 1991, Atlanta-based singer and songwriter Pam Reynolds felt extremely dizzy, lost her ability to speak, and had difficulty moving her body. A CAT scan showed that she had a giant artery aneurysm—a grossly swollen blood vessel in the wall of her basilar artery, close to the brain stem. If it burst, which could happen at any moment, it would kill her. But the standard surgery to drain and repair it might kill her too.

With no other options, Pam turned to a last, desperate measure offered by neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Spetzler was a specialist and pioneer in hypothermic cardiac arrest—a daring surgical procedure nicknamed “Operation Standstill.” Spetzler would bring Pam’s body down to a temperature so low that she was essentially dead. Her brain would not function, but it would be able to survive longer without oxygen at this temperature. The low temperature would also soften the swollen blood vessels, allowing them to be operated on with less risk of bursting. When the procedure was complete, the surgical team would bring her back to a normal temperature before irreversible damage set in.

Essentially, Pam agreed to die in order to save her life—and in the process had what is perhaps the most famous case of independent corroboration of out of body experience (OBE) perceptions on record. This case is especially important because cardiologist Michael Sabom was able to obtain verification from medical personnel regarding crucial details of the surgical intervention that Pam reported. Here’s what happened.

Pam was brought into the operating room at 7:15 a.m., she was given general anesthesia, and she quickly lost conscious awareness. At this point, Spetzler and his team of more than 20 physicians, nurses, and technicians went to work. They lubricated Pam’s eyes to prevent drying, and taped them shut. They attached EEG electrodes to monitor the electrical activity of her cerebral cortex. They inserted small, molded speakers into her ears and secured them with gauze and tape. The speakers would emit repeated 100-decibel clicks—approximately the noise produced by a speeding express train—eliminating outside sounds and measuring the activity of her brainstem.

At 8:40 a.m., the tray of surgical instruments was uncovered, and Robert Spetzler began cutting through Pam’s skull with a special surgical saw that produced a noise similar to a dental drill. At this moment, Pam later said, she felt herself “pop” out of her body and hover above it, watching as doctors worked on her body.

Although she no longer had use of her eyes and ears, she described her observations in terms of her senses and perceptions. “I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar,” she said. “I expected them to take all of the hair, but they did not.” She also described the Midas Rex bone saw (“The saw thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush and it had a dent in it … ”) and the dental-drill sound it made with considerable accuracy.

Meanwhile, Spetzler was removing the outermost membrane of Pamela’s brain, cutting it open with scissors. At about the same time, a female cardiac surgeon was attempting to locate the femoral artery in Pam’s right groin. Remarkably, Pam later claimed to remember a female voice saying, “We have a problem. Her arteries are too small.” And then a male voice: “Try the other side.” Medical records confirm this conversation, yet Pam could not have heard them.

The cardiac surgeon was right—Pam’s blood vessels were indeed too small to accept the abundant blood flow requested by the cardiopulmonary bypass machine, so at 10:50 a.m., a tube was inserted into Pam’s left femoral artery and connected to the cardiopulmonary bypass machine. The warm blood circulated from the artery into the cylinders of the bypass machine, where it was cooled down before being returned to her body. Her body temperature began to fall, and at 11:05 a.m. Pam’s heart stopped. Her EEG brain waves flattened into total silence. A few minutes later, her brain stem became totally unresponsive, and her body temperature fell to a sepulchral 60 degrees Fahrenheit. At 11:25 a.m., the team tilted up the head of the operating table, turned off the bypass machine, and drained the blood from her body. Pamela Reynolds was clinically dead.

At this point, Pam’s out-of-body adventure transformed into a near-death experience (NDE): She recalls floating out of the operating room and traveling down a tunnel with a light. She saw deceased relatives and friends, including her long-dead grandmother, waiting at the end of this tunnel. She entered the presence of a brilliant, wonderfully warm and loving light, and sensed that her soul was part of God and that everything in existence was created from the light (the breathing of God). But this extraordinary experience ended abruptly, as Reynolds’s deceased uncle led her back to her body—a feeling she described as “plunging into a pool of ice.”

Meanwhile, in the operating room, the surgery had come to an end. When all the blood had drained from Pam’s brain, the aneurysm simply collapsed and Spetzler clipped it off. Soon, the bypass machine was turned on and warm blood was pumped back into her body. As her body temperature started to increase, her brainsteam began to respond to the clicking speakers in her ears and the EEG recorded electrical activity in the cortex. The bypass machine was turned off at 12:32 p.m. Pam’s life had been restored, and she was taken to the recovery room in stable condition at 2:10 p.m.

Tales of otherworldly experiences have been part of human cultures seemingly forever, but NDEs as such first came to broad public attention in 1975 by way of American psychiatrist and philosopher Raymond Moody’s popular book Life After Life. He presented more than 100 case studies of people who experienced vivid mental experiences close to death or during “clinical death” and were subsequently revived to tell the tale. Their experiences were remarkably similar, and Moody coined the term NDE to refer to this phenomenon. The book was popular and controversial, and scientific investigation of NDEs began soon after its publication with the founding, in 1978, of the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS)—the first organization in the world devoted to the scientific study of NDEs and their relationship to mind and consciousness.

NDEs are the vivid, realistic, and often deeply life-changing experiences of men, women, and children who have been physiologically or psychologically close to death. They can be evoked by cardiac arrest and coma caused by brain damage, intoxication, or asphyxia. They can also happen following such events as electrocution, complications from surgery, or severe blood loss during or after a delivery. They can even occur as the result of accidents or illnesses in which individuals genuinely fear they might die. Surveys conducted in the United States and Germany suggest that approximately 4.2 percent of the population has reported an NDE. It has also been estimated that more than 25 million individuals worldwide have had an NDE in the past 50 years.

People from all walks of life and belief systems have this experience. Studies indicate that the experience of an NDE is not influenced by gender, race, socioeconomic status, or level of education. Although NDEs are sometimes presented as religious experiences, this seems to be a matter of individual perception. Furthermore, researchers have found no relationship between religion and the experience of an NDE. That is, it did not matter whether the people recruited in those studies were Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, or agnostic.

Although the details differ, NDEs are characterized by a number of core features. Perhaps the most vivid is the OBE: the sense of having left one’s body and of watching events going on around one’s body or, occasionally, at some distant physical location. During OBEs, near-death experiencers (NDErs) are often astonished to discover that they have retained consciousness, perception, lucid thinking, memory, emotions, and their sense of personal identity. If anything, these processes are heightened: Thinking is vivid; hearing is sharp; and vision can extend to 360 degrees. NDErs claim that without physical bodies, they are able to penetrate through walls and doors and project themselves wherever they want. They frequently report the ability to read people’s thoughts.

The effects of NDEs on the experience are intense, overwhelming, and real. A number of studies conducted in United States, Western European countries, and Australia have shown that most NDErs are profoundly and positively transformed by the experience. One woman says, “I was completely altered after the accident. I was another person, according to those who lived near me. I was happy, laughing, appreciated little things, joked, smiled a lot, became friends with everyone … so completely different than I was before!”

However different their personalities before the NDE, experiencers tend to share a similar psychological profile after the NDE. Indeed, their beliefs, values, behaviors, and worldviews seem quite comparable afterward. Importantly, these psychological and behavioral changes are not the kind of changes one would expect if this experience were a hallucination. And, as noted NDE researcher Pim van Lommel and his colleagues have demonstrated, these changes become more apparent with the passage of time.

Some skeptics legitimately argue that the main problem with reports of OBE perceptions is that they often rest uniquely on the NDEr’s testimony—there is no independent corroboration. From a scientific perspective, such self-reports remain inconclusive. But during the last few decades, some self-reports of NDErs have been independently corroborated by witnesses, such as that of Pam Reynolds. One of the best known of these corroborated veridical NDE perceptions—perceptions that can be proven to coincide with reality—is the experience of a woman named Maria, whose case was first documented by her critical care social worker, Kimberly Clark.

Maria was a migrant worker who had a severe heart attack while visiting friends in Seattle. She was rushed to Harborview Hospital and placed in the coronary care unit. A few days later, she had a cardiac arrest but was rapidly resuscitated. The following day, Clark visited her. Maria told Clark that during her cardiac arrest she was able to look down from the ceiling and watch the medical team at work on her body. At one point in this experience, said Maria, she found herself outside the hospital and spotted a tennis shoe on the ledge of the north side of the third floor of the building. She was able to provide several details regarding its appearance, including the observations that one of its laces was stuck underneath the heel and that the little toe area was worn. Maria wanted to know for sure whether she had “really” seen that shoe, and she begged Clark to try to locate it.

Quite skeptical, Clark went to the location described by Maria—and found the tennis shoe. From the window of her hospital room, the details that Maria had recounted could not be discerned. But upon retrieval of the shoe, Clark confirmed Maria’s observations. “The only way she could have had such a perspective,” said Clark, “was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe. I retrieved the shoe and brought it back to Maria; it was very concrete evidence for me.”

This case is particularly impressive given that during cardiac arrest, the flow of blood to the brain is interrupted. When this happens, the brain’s electrical activity (as measured with EEG) disappears after 10 to 20 seconds. In this state, a patient is deeply comatose. Because the brain structures mediating higher mental functions are severely impaired, such patients are expected to have no clear and lucid mental experiences that will be remembered. Nonetheless, studies conducted in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States have revealed that approximately 15 percent of cardiac arrest survivors do report some recollection from the time when they were clinically dead. These studies indicate that consciousness, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings can be experienced during a period when the brain shows no measurable activity.

NDEs experienced by people who do not have sight in everyday life are quite intriguing. In 1994, researchers Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper decided to undertake a search for cases of NDE-based perception in the blind. They reasoned that such cases would represent the ultimate demonstration of veridical perceptions during NDEs. If a blind person was able to report on verifiable events that took place when they were clinically dead, that would mean something real was occurring. They interviewed 31 individuals, of whom 14 were blind from birth. Twenty-one of the participants had had an NDE; the others had had OBEs only. Strikingly, the experiences they reported conform to the classic NDE pattern, whether they were born blind or had lost their sight in later life. The results of the study were published in 1997. Based on all the cases they investigated, Ring and Cooper concluded that what happens during an NDE affords another perspective to perceive reality that does not depend on the senses of the physical body. They proposed to call this other mode of perception mindsight.

Despite corroborated reports, many materialist scientists cling to the notion that OBEs and NDEs are located in the brain. In 2002, neurologist Olaf Blanke and colleagues at the University Hospitals of Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland described in the prestigious scientific journal Nature the strange occurrence that happened to a 43-year-old female patient with epilepsy. Because her seizures could not be controlled by medication alone, neurosurgery was being considered as the next step. The researchers implanted electrodes in her right temporal lobe to provide information about the localization and extent of the epileptogenic zone—the area of the brain that was causing the seizures—which had to be surgically removed. Other electrodes were implanted to identify and localize, by means of electrical stimulation, the areas of the brain that—if removed—would result in loss of sensory capacities, linguistic ability, or even paralysis. Such a procedure is particularly critical to spare important brain areas that are adjacent to the epileptogenic zone.

When they stimulated the angular gyrus—a region of the brain in the parietal lobe that is thought to integrate sensory information related to vision, touch, and balance to give us a perception of our own bodies—the patient reported seeing herself “lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” She described herself as “floating” near the ceiling. She also reported seeing her legs “becoming shorter.”

The article received global press coverage and created quite a commotion. The editors of Nature went so far as to declare triumphantly that as a result of this one study—which involved only one patient—the part of the brain that can induce OBEs had been located.

“It’s another blow against those who believe that the mind and spirit are somehow separate from the brain,” said psychologist Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society, which seeks to debunk all kinds of paranormal claims. “In reality, all experience is derived from the brain.”

In another article published in 2004, Blanke and co-workers described six patients, of whom three had experienced an atypical and incomplete OBE. Four patients reported an autoscopy—that is, they saw their own double from the vantage point of their own body. In this paper, the researchers describe an OBE as a temporary dysfunction of the junction of the temporal and parietal cortex. But, as Pim van Lommel noted, the abnormal bodily experiences described by Blanke and colleagues entail a false sense of reality. Typical OBEs, in contrast, implicate a verifiable perception (from a position above or outside of the body) of events, such as their own resuscitation or a traffic accident, and the surroundings in which the events took place. Along the same lines, psychiatrist Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia commented that “We cannot assume from the fact that electrical stimulation of the brain can induce OBE-like illusions that all OBEs are therefore illusions.”

Materialistic scientists have proposed a number of physiological explanations to account for the various features of NDEs. British psychologist Susan Blackmore has propounded the “dying brain” hypothesis: that a lack of oxygen (or anoxia) during the dying process might induce abnormal firing of neurons in brain areas responsible for vision, and that such an abnormal firing would lead to the illusion of seeing a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel.

Would it? Van Lommel and colleagues objected that if anoxia plays a central role in the production of NDEs, most cardiac arrest patients would report an NDE. Studies show that this is clearly not the case. Another problem with this view is that reports of a tunnel are absent from several accounts of NDErs. As pointed out by renowned NDE researcher Sam Parnia, some individuals have reported an NDE when they had not been terminally ill and so would have had normal levels of oxygen in their brains.

Parnia raises another problem: When oxygen levels decrease markedly, patients whose lungs or hearts do not work properly experience an “acute confusional state,” during which they are highly confused and agitated and have little or no memory recall. In stark contrast, during NDEs people experience lucid consciousness, well-structured thought processes, and clear reasoning. They also have an excellent memory of the NDE, which usually stays with them for several decades. In other respects, Parnia argues that if this hypothesis is correct, then the illusion of seeing a light and tunnel would progressively develop as the patient’s blood oxygen level drops. Medical observations, however, indicate that patients with low oxygen levels do not report seeing a light, a tunnel, or any of the common features of an NDE we discussed earlier.

During the 1990s, more research indicated that the anoxia theory of NDEs was on the wrong track. James Whinnery, a chemistry professor with West Texas A&M, was involved with studies simulating the extreme conditions that can occur during aerial combat maneuvers. In these studies, fighter pilots were subjected to extreme gravitational forces in a giant centrifuge. Such rapid acceleration decreases blood flow and, consequently, delivery of oxygen to the brain. In so doing, it induces brief periods of unconsciousness that Whinnery calls “dreamlets.” Whinnery hypothesized that although some of the core features of NDEs are found during dreamlets, the main characteristics of dreamlets are impaired memory for events just prior to the onset of unconsciousness, confusion, and disorientation upon awakening. These symptoms are not typically associated with NDEs. In addition, life transformations are never reported following dreamlets.

So, if the “dying brain” is not responsible for NDEs, could they simply be hallucinations? In my opinion, the answer is no. Let’s look at the example of hallucinations that can result from ingesting ketamine, a veterinary drug that is sometimes used recreationally, and often at great cost to the user.

At small doses, the anesthetic agent ketamine can induce hallucinations and feelings of being out of the body. Ketamine is thought to act primarily by inhibiting N-Methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors, which normally open in response to binding of glutamate, the most abundant excitatory chemical messenger in the human brain. Psychiatrist Karl Jensen has speculated that the blockade of NMDA receptors may induce an NDE. But ketamine experiences are often frightening, producing weird images; and most ketamine users realize that the experiences produced by this drug are illusory. In contrast, NDErs are strongly convinced of the reality of what they experienced. Furthermore, many of the central features of NDEs are not reported with ketamine. That being said, we cannot rule out that the blockade of NMDA receptors may be involved in some NDEs.

Neuroscientist Michael Persinger has claimed that he and his colleagues have produced all the major features of the NDE by using weak transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the temporal lobes. Persinger’s work is based on the premise that abnormal activity in the temporal lobe may trigger an NDE. A review of the literature on epilepsy, however, indicates that the classical features of NDEs are not associated with epileptic seizures located in the temporal lobes. Moreover, as Bruce Greyson and his collaborators have correctly emphasized, the experiences reported by participants in Persinger’s TMS studies bear little resemblance with the typical features of NDEs.

The scientific NDE studies performed over the past decades indicate that heightened mental functions can be experienced independently of the body at a time when brain activity is greatly impaired or seemingly absent (such as during cardiac arrest). Some of these studies demonstrate that blind people can have veridical perceptions during OBEs associated with an NDE. Other investigations show that NDEs often result in deep psychological and spiritual changes.

These findings strongly challenge the mainstream neuroscientific view that mind and consciousness result solely from brain activity. As we have seen, such a view fails to account for how NDErs can experience—while their hearts are stopped—vivid and complex thoughts and acquire veridical information about objects or events remote from their bodies.

NDE studies also suggest that after physical death, mind and consciousness may continue in a transcendent level of reality that normally is not accessible to our senses and awareness. Needless to say, this view is utterly incompatible with the belief of many materialists that the material world is the only reality.

Excerpted from “The Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives.”

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Death of a Theologian

Peter Berger

April 4, 2012

The American Interest

William Hughes Hamilton died on February 28, 2012, aged 87. His passing was barely noted in the media, a fact both sad and instructive. Along with a small group of other individuals, he attained sudden celebrity status in the 1960s as one of the founders of the so-called “death of God theology”. The phrase had all the makings of a classic man-bites-dog story, so it is not surprising that in April 1966 it appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the caption “Is God dead?” At that time Hamilton was on the faculty of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, in upstate New York. As public attention engulfed Hamilton, he confronted a wave of hostility, both by colleagues and in the Presbyterian church where he worshipped with his family. He found a more friendly haven elsewhere, first at the progressive New College in Sarasota, Florida, and later at Portland State University in Oregon (where he taught for many years until his retirement).

When the “death of God theology” burst onto the American religious scene, it was perceived by many people as the most cutting-edge Christian response to the spirit of modernity. The impact was very short-lived, which reminds one (perhaps uncharitably) of an observation by William Ralph Inge, the late Dean of St.Paul’s Cathedral, to the effect that “he who marries the spirit of the age soon finds himself a widower”. Be this as it may, Hamilton was one of the three central individuals in the founding group, along with Thomas Altizer and Paul van Buren; a Jewish associate of the group was Richard Rubenstein. They all agreed that the traditional God of the Biblical tradition was no longer credible. Hamilton believed that Christians should forget about the hope of heaven, instead concentrate on understanding this world and doing good in it, thus presumably following the moral teachings of Jesus. I think it is fair to say that Altizer was the intellectually most interesting member of the group. He understood the death of God as a cosmic process of God’s emptying himself into the world he created; an ancient Christian term for this has been the kenosis of God, his voluntary humiliation in order to redeem the fallen world. Altizer saw the culminating of the kenosis in the crucifixion of Jesus—at which point God merges with the natural world and no longer confronts it as a transcendent being. (Kenosis, by the way, has a certain resemblance with the idea of tsimtsum in Jewish mysticism—God contracts himself in order to make room for the world. It is in that sense that God died.)

This is pretty heavy stuff. It is not to denigrate them if one says that Hamilton and van Buren have a simpler understanding of the “death of God”. Hamilton insisted that he was not an atheist, that he considered himself a follower of Jesus, no matter whether one understood Jesus as divine. He never changed his mind about this. In a 2007 interview he said: “The ‘death of God’ is a metaphor. We needed to redefine Christianity as a possibility without the presence of God.” The “possibility” here is a moral, not a transcendent one. Van Buren became strongly engaged in Christian-Jewish dialogue, and became affiliated with an institution in Jerusalem interested in this dialogue. He did not like the phrase “death of God theology”, preferring to call his approach “secular theology”. He and Hamilton, more so than Altizer, were very much in the American tradition of liberal Protestantism. Rubenstein came to the “death of God” by way of the idea that one could not believe in the Biblical God in the wake of the Holocaust; logically enough this led him in the direction of heterodox mysticism. (It is not without interest that the idea of tsimtsum comes from the teaching of Isaac Luria, the 16th-century founder of the Safed school of kabbalah. Luria taught God’s exile from the world—that is, his absence—in the wake of an earlier catastrophe in history, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.)

The phrase “death of God” is of course derived from Friedrich Nietzsche. It occurs in an early work of his, The Cheerful Science (1882). (The German title, Die froehliche Wissenschaft was originally rendered in English as The Gay Science. For obvious reasons this would be rather misleading today.) A character identified as The Madman proclaims the death of God from “the scaffolding of the universe”: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us?…. Must we not ourselves become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” In his later work, especially in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche sought to answer these terrible questions with his evocation of the “Overman” (Uebermensch).

Nietsche was a pivotal figure. Dying on the very cusp of the 20th century, he has had a multifaceted influence on Western thought ever since. As is only to be expected, the influence affected both profound and trivial successors. Paradoxically, the “death of God” theology had roots in the profound thought of the father of Protestant neo-orthodoxy, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. (Van Buren studied in Basel with Barth, who would have been appalled if he had read what his student wrote later on.) Especially in his early work, which set the feisty tone of the neo-orthodox movement, Barth asserted that Christian faith is the very opposite of all religion: Religion is the human attempt to invent God; the Gospel is God’s unmediated address to humans, all of whose outreaching toward God is sinful illusion. (One must not forget that Barth came out of Calvinism, the most radically transcendent tradition in Christian history.) Thus Barth had no problem with even the fiercest critics of the Christian religion, of whom Nietzsche was certainly one. Another source of the “death of God theology” was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the great martyrs of 20th-century Protestantism—he was the Protestant theologian executed by the Nazi regime for his connection with the conspirators who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944. Bonhoeffer did not like Barth’s theology (he called it “revelation positivism”), but he was affiliated with the Confessing Church, the anti-Nazi movement in German Protestantism, which was influenced by Barthian ideas. In his famous Letters from Prison, written in the months before his execution, Bonhoeffer spoke of “religionless Christianity”. Tragically he did not have an opportunity to develop this idea. Another German source was Rudolf Bultmann, who was prominent in the years after World War II with his program of “demythologizing” Christianity.

I cannot assess to what extent these highly sophisticated thinkers influenced the “death of God theologians” of the 1960s. But there are much more popular sources in the history of liberal Protestantism in America. Within that community, whose piety differs greatly from the beliefs and practices of Evangelicals, it may well be a majority for whom God may be “dead”—not of course in the sense of atheism, but because all the emphatically supernatural dimensions of the Gospel are translated into naturalist terms. Van Buren’s preferred term “secular theology” fits better here than Nietzsche’s “death of God”. The latter idea is dramatically metaphysical, the former soberly mundane. In most cases the naturalist/secular translation of the Christian message has a strongly moral content. The sociologist Nancy Ammerman has called this “Golden Rule Christianity”. It is based on the alleged “teachings of Jesus”. Needless to say, there are different views on just what these teachings are. Some are primarily personal—the virtues of decency and compassion. Others are more concerned with the public sphere. The most influential representative of this more political view of Jesus’ teachings was Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918), the prime advocate of the so-called Social Gospel. He wrote that the Kingdom of God, proclaimed by Jesus, is “not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming the life of earth into the harmony of heaven”. One might say that Rauschenbusch was the father of the liberal ideology of the mainline Protestant churches in the 20th century and beyond, characterized by a politically moderate reformism (which, along with American liberalism in general, has shifted to the left since the 1960s). The “teachings of Jesus” have also been interpreted as those of a revolutionary, a pacifist, even as the “world’s greatest business executive” (that one in the words of the advertising executive Bruce Barton, who wrote the 1925 bestseller The Man Nobody Knows). Every religious tradition that survives over centuries is subject to endless, often bizarre, re-interpretations.

What is the trouble with all these attempts (whether sophisticated or not)? The first problem is sociological: When the supernatural dimensions of Christianity are stripped away what remains are various secular agendas that can be embraced without religious trappings. In other words, every social Gospel tends to be self-liquidating. The second problem is historical: Just what did Jesus actually teach? Admittedly, New Testament scholars are not unanimous, regardless of whether they are themselves Christian believers. (As to the latter group, they are a particularly troubled bunch: I once opined that it is as difficult for a New Testament scholar to be a Christian as for a gynecologist to have sexual intercourse.) It is noteworthy that the oldest portions of the New Testament, the letters of the Apostle Paul, show no interest whatever in what Jesus taught: Paul preached what Christ did—as the divine Lord, whose incarnation, death and resurrection brought about a tectonic shift in the reality of the cosmos. As to the Sermon on the Mount (generally taken as the summation of Jesus’ teaching), it was almost certainly not delivered as a single sermon, but was composed as a collection of Jesus’ sayings: Since we don’t know the context of each one, it is difficult to know how it was intended. The British writer Ferdinand Mount described the Sermon of the Mount as perhaps the greatest sermon ever, but that it was written for bachelors—that is, for individuals with no responsibility for the future. Probably Jesus’ message about the Kingdom of God was apocalyptic—a message about a radical shift in the nature of reality (which means that Paul was not far off). We know that many of his followers, and perhaps Jesus himself, expected that the apocalyptic event would happen in their own lifetime. Thus, as some scholars have put it, the moral teachings of Jesus (and possibly Paul’s as well) were an “interim ethic”—how to live in the short time before the coming of the Kingdom. If you expect the world to end next week, you won’t bother to change the oil, though you still want the windshield wipers to work. In that interpretation, the Sermon on the Mount was meant to describe the world after the coming of the Kingdom (though some of Jesus’ followers may want to anticipate this blessed condition in their present lives). Be this as it may, it is very doubtful indeed that Jesus intended these teachings to be a behavioral code for the next two millennia. In any case, any society larger than an Amish village would not survive for very long if it tried to live by such a code.

If the “death of God” is understood as an affirmation that God does not exist, Christianity (and any other religion) is debunked as an illusion (I think that this was fully Nietzsche’s intention): Theologians, like typewriter repairmen, should retrain for other employment. If on the other hand the phrase is understood as a metaphor for secularization, thought to be an inevitable accompaniment of modernity, the empirical evidence does not support it: Most of the modernizing world today is intensely religious. To say the least, the “death of God” has been very much relativized.

I have written all of the above as an objective observer, not as a Christian believer. I will only add one brief postscript in the latter capacity. As a believer, I resonate with a bumper sticker I saw, of all places, just off Harvard Square: “Dear Mr. Nietzsche. You are dead. Yours very truly, God.”

Read also: William Hamilton Dies at 87; Known for ‘Death of God’

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Climate Change Alarmist Takes a More Humble Approach

Ian Johnston

April 23, 2012

MSNBC

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

Lovelock, 92, is writing a new book in which he will say climate change is still happening, but not as quickly as he once feared.

He previously painted some of the direst visions of the effects of climate change. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

However, the professor admitted in a telephone interview with msnbc.com that he now thinks he had been “extrapolating too far."

The new book, due to be published next year, will be the third in a trilogy, following his earlier works, “Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back – and How We Can Still Save Humanity,” and “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can.”

The new book will discuss how humanity can change the way it acts in order to help regulate the Earth’s natural systems, performing a role similar to the harmonious one played by plants when they absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

Climate's 'usual tricks'

It will also reflect his new opinion that global warming has not occurred as he had expected.

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.

In 2007, Time magazine named Lovelock as one of 13 leaders and visionaries in an article on “Heroes of the Environment,” which also included Gore, Mikhail Gorbachev and Robert Redford.

“Jim Lovelock has no university, no research institute, no students. His almost unparalleled influence in environmental science is based instead on a particular way of seeing things,” Oliver Morton, of the journal Nature wrote in Time. “Humble, stubborn, charming, visionary, proud and generous, his ideas about Gaia have started a change in the conception of biology that may serve as a vital complement to the revolution that brought us the structures of DNA and proteins and the genetic code.”

Lovelock also won the U.K.’s Geological Society’s Wollaston Medal in 2006. In a posting on its website, the society said it was “rare to be able to say that the recipient has opened up a whole new field of Earth science study” – referring to the Gaia theory of the planet as single complex system.

However Lovelock, who works alone at his home in Devon, England, has fallen out with the green movement in the past, particularly after saying countries should build nuclear power stations to help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions caused by coal and oil.

Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”

He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role.

“It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said.

He said he still thought that climate change was happening, but that its effects would be felt farther in the future than he previously thought.

“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit,” Lovelock said.

'I made a mistake'

As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.

Lovelock -- who has previously worked with NASA and discovered the presence of harmful chemicals (CFCs) in the atmosphere but not their effect on the ozone layer -- stressed that humanity should still “do our best to cut back on fossil fuel burning” and try to adapt to the coming changes.

Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the U.K.’s respected Met Office Hadley Centre, agreed Lovelock had been too alarmist with claims about people having to live in the Arctic by 2100.

And he also agreed with Lovelock that the rate of warming in recent years had been less than expected by the climate models.

However, Stott said this was a short-term trend that could be within the natural range of variation and it would need to continue for another 10 years or so before it could be considered evidence that something was missing from climate models.

Stott said temperature records and other observations were “broadly speaking continuing to pan out” with what was expected.

He said there did need to be greater understanding of the effect of the oceans on the climate and added that air particles caused by pollution – which cool the Earth by reflecting the sun’s heat -- from rapidly developing countries like China could be having an effect.

On Lovelock, Stott said he had “a lot of respect” for him, saying “he’s had a lot of good ideas and interesting thoughts.”

“I like the fact he’s provocative and provokes people to think about these things,” Stott said.

Keya Chatterjee, international climate policy director of environmental campaign group WWF-US, said in a statement that it was "hard not to get overwhelmed and be defeatist" about the challenges facing the planet, but suggested alarmist talk did not help persuade people to act to reduce climate change.

"While the problem is becoming increasingly urgent, we’ve found that focusing on the most dire predictions does not resonate with the public, governments, or business.

People tend to shut off when a problem does not seem solvable," she said.

"And that’s not the case with climate change because we can still avoid its worst impacts. We know that we already have all of the technologies needed to slow climate change down. We only lack the political will to go up against vested interests," she added.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading body on the subject, the world’s average temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900. By 2100, it predicts it will rise by another 2 to 11.5 degrees, depending upon the levels of greenhouse gases emitted.

Asked to give its latest position on climate change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement that observations collected by satellites, sensors on land, in the air and seas “continue to show that the average global surface temperature is rising.”

The statement said “the impacts of a changing climate” were already being felt around the globe, with “more frequent extreme weather events of certain types (heat waves, heavy rain events); changes in precipitation patterns … longer growing seasons; shifts in the ranges of plant and animal species; sea level rise; and decreases in snow, glacier and Arctic sea ice coverage.”

NOAA reports its data in monthly U.S. and global climate reports and annual State of the Climate reports.

Its annual climate summary for 2011 said that the combined land and ocean surface temperature for the world was 0.92 degrees above the 20th century average of 57.0 degrees, making it the 35th consecutive year since 1976 that the yearly global temperature was above average.

“All 11 years of the 21st century so far (2001-2011) rank among the 13 warmest in the 132-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th century, 1998, was warmer than 2011,” it said.

In the interview, Lovelock said he would not take back a word of his seminal work “Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth,” published in 1979.

But of “Revenge of Gaia,” published in 2006, he said he had gone too far in describing what the warming Earth would see over the next century.

“I would be a little more cautious -- but then that would have spoilt the book,” he quipped.

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Logical Fallacies Infographic

Here. Print it out.

You knew the argument didn’t make sense, and now you will know the name for the specific way it doesn’t.

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Youth Ministries Teaching Moralism, Not Gospel

Audrey Barrick

April 17, 2012

Christian Post

Ministry leaders are seeing a major problem among youth groups – an emphasis on behavior modification over the Gospel.

In a series featured on The Gospel Coalition website, several ministers discussed their concerns with how youths were being taught in the church, namely with messages aimed more at keeping them out of trouble.

"Many youth pastors preach moralism over the gospel in order to protect students from self-destruction," said Cameron Cole, director of youth ministries at Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Ala. "Unfortunately, law-driven ministry often yields the opposite of its intention; law and pressure often inflame rebellion."

Cole doesn't see a lack of Gospel teaching in youth ministries when it comes to salvation and justification. He believes youth pastors may even be "more faithful" than senior pastors in "helping their flock understand Christianity as saving relationship rather than cultural religion."

But when it comes to sanctification, or the process of being set apart for holy use, youth ministries are getting it wrong, Cole believes.

"Youth ministry often focuses on emotional exhortation and moral performance," he observed. "A legalistic tone frequently characterizes the theology of sanctification in youth ministry."

According to Brian H. Cosby, associate pastor of youth and families at Carriage Lane Presbyterian Church in Peachtree City, Ga., such teaching has led to widespread belief in "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" where "we are supposed to be 'good people'" and where God is more like a "cosmic therapist" or "divine butler."

But Cole understands why youth ministry tends to focus on legalism and behavior.

Simply put, "youth pastors want to see changed lives," he noted.

"Wanting validation for their tireless labor, youth ministers occasionally focus on behavior modification as a means of providing tangible proof of the efficacy of their ministry. A kid carrying his or her Bible to school, signing a chastity pledge, or sporting a WWJD bracelet may appear like signs of spiritual progress – the fruit of ministry labor for a youth pastor."

Cole cautioned, however, that "if these actions come out of a student misunderstanding Christianity as a code of behavior rather than heart transformation through the Holy Spirit, then they do not necessarily reflect lasting life change."

Parents aren't helping the situation either. Wanting their children to be moral, parents sometimes view "the church exclusively as a vehicle for moral education, rather than spiritually forming them in Christ, and put pressure on youth and senior pastors to moralize their children," Cole pointed out.

The Birmingham youth director stressed the need for youth ministry to be viewed not as a venue for entertainment and moral teaching but as a serious teaching and discipleship ministry.

And youth pastors, he stressed, need to view themselves as sowers who plant Gospel seeds for harvest down the road.

Quoting Mark Upton, a former youth worker and current pastor at Hope Community Church in Charlotte, N.C., Cole said, "If anyone asks you about your ministry, tell them you will let them know in ten years."

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Video: "I Am Hellene"

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Schema-Archbishop Anthony (Abashidze) Canonized in Ukraine

On St. Thomas Sunday, 22 April 2012, His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine officiated at the Divine Liturgy celebrated in the Church of Ss Anthony and Theodosius at the Dormition Laura of the Caves in Kiev.

Concelebrating with His Beatitude were Metropolitan Pavel of Vyshgorod and Chernobyl, abbot of the Laura; Archbishop Antoniy of Borispol, head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Rector of the Kievan Theological Schools; Archbishop Alexander of Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky and Vishnevoye, secretary of the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church; Bishops Nikodim of Zhitomir and Novograd-Volynskiy, Ilariy of Makarov, Panteleimon of Vasilkov, and ordained monks of the Laura.

At the Little Entrance, His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir elevated Bishop Nikodim of Zhitomir and Novograd-Volynskiy to the rank of archbishop.

The office of canonization of Schema-Archbishop Anthony (Abashidze; +1942) as a locally venerated saint was performed during the divine service. Archbishop Alexander read out the decision of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of 14 June 2011 (minutes 21) to enter the name of Schema-Archbishop Anthony into church calendar. Archbishop Antoniy of Borispol told all those present about the life of the saint. His icon was brought to the middle of the church, and His Beatitude, archpastors, clergymen and laymen venerated the relics of the newly canonized saint, website of th4e Ukrainian Orthodox Church reports.

Life

Schema-Archbishop Anthony (secular name David Iliych Abashidze) was born in Georgia in 1847. He graduated with distinction from the Law Department of the Novorossiysk Imperial University in Odessa in 1891 and that same year entered the theological academy. He was tonsured with the name of Dimitry at the age of twenty-four. In 1897 he was appointed inspector of the Kutaisi theological seminary, and in 1898 – inspector of the Tbilisi theological seminary. It was he who expelled Joseph Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin, from the seminary. Bishop Dimitry was appointed Bishop of Tauris and Simferopol in 1912. When he was in Moscow for the Local Council of 1917-18, he would walk along the streets with his first-aid kit and give help to those wounded in the battle for Moscow. Bishop Dimitry was arrested and exiled from the Crimea in 1923 and settled in the Kitayevsky Hermitage which belonged to the Laura of the Caves in Kiev and was located some nine kilometers from it. He made a vow of silence and took the Great Schema with the name of Anthony. He was revered as a great ascetic, a man of prayer and clairvoyant elder. Orthodox Christians from Russia, Ukraine, Belarussia and Georgia came to him for advice. He died in 1942 and was buried behind the sanctuary wall of the Church of the Elevation of the Cross at the entrance to the Near Caves.

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