Computing technology is an indispensable feature of modern life. Our rapid-paced world seems more and more remote from the world narrated in sacred scriptures. However, despite its pervasiveness, there remains a dearth of theological reflection about computer technology and what it means to live as a faithful individual in a digitally - saturated society. The Web and Faith provides a brief theology of technology, rooted in the Islamic tradition and oriented around the grand themes of creation, redemption and new creation. The book combines a concise, accessible style with penetrating cultural and theological analysis. Building on the work of Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, and drawing from a wide range of enlightened Islamic thinkers, the book situates computer technology within the big picture of the story of creation. Technology is not neutral, but neither is there an exclusively ''faith-based'' form of technological production and use. Instead, this book guides us to see the digital world as part of a larger creation, which is redeemable according to the law of faith. Responsibly used, technology can become an integral part of religious wisdom world-wide.

How did pious medieval Muslims experience health and disease? Rooted in the prophet's experiences with medicine and healing, Muslim pietistic literature developed cosmologies in which physical suffering and medical interventions interacted with religious obligations and spiritual health. This book traces the development of prophetic medical literature and religious writings around health and disease to give a new perspective on how patienthood was conditioned by the intersection of medicine and Islam. The author investigates the early and foundational writings on prophetic medicine and related pietistic writings on health and disease produced during the Islamic Classical Age. Looking at attitudes from and towards clerics, physicians and patients, sickness and health are gradually revealed as a social, gendered, religious, and cultural experience. Patients are shown to experience certain sensoria that are conditioned not only by medical knowledge, but also by religious and pietistic attitudes. This is a fascinating insight into the development of Muslim pieties and the traditions of medical practice. It will be of great interest to scholars interested in Islamic Studies, history of religion, history of medicine, science and religion and the history of embodied religious practice, particularly in matters of health and medicine.

This book, originally published in 1984, established the need for a strategic managerial response to the new technology, which relies on an understanding of the real effects of technology - on organisational structure, manageemnt style and employee relations. It assesses the impact of the new information technology on manufacturing systems, employment levels and types, industrial relations and finally on marketing and external relationships.

Originally published in 1993, this book contains 3 studies from Finland, Greece and Japan. These countries were chosen because they experienced their technological transformation mainly during the 20th Century and it was considered that their experience would have some relevant lessons for the countries of the third world. Special attention is paid to Japan as its example has great relevance both for development theory and practical strategies.

This book provides an overview of the history of interactions between science and religion, with an emphasis on Christianity. Raymond E. Grizzle examines his own history of self-reflection on science and religion, focusing on what we have learned about the structure, history, and functioning of creation. Both histories are interpreted as histories of discarded images, largely consisting of the replacement of images of creation provided by religion with those provided by the natural sciences. Grizzle assesses the major kinds of creationism that exist today and explores conflicts arising from young Earth creationism and intelligent design. He also provides examples of productive dialogue regarding how science and religion might inform one another. Two major themes that run throughout the book are the importance of underlying beliefs and the reliability of modern science in producing a truthful understanding of the cosmos and the creation process. Science and Religion in Dialogue concludes with some suggested principles for constructive self-reflection and thoughts on how today s conflict might be replaced with productive discourse involving both science and religion.

With contributions from founders of the field, including Justin Barrett, E. Thomas Lawson, Robert N. McCauley, Paschal Boyer, Armin Geertz and Harvey Whitehouse, as well as from younger scholars from successive stages in the field's development, this is an important survey of the first twenty-five years of the cognitive science of religion. Each chapter provides the author's views on the contributions the cognitive science of religion has made to the academic study of religion, as well as any shortcomings in the field and challenges for the future. Religion Explained? The Cognitive Science of Religion after Twenty-five Years calls attention to the field whilst providing an accessible and diverse survey of approaches from key voices, as well as offering suggestions for further research within the field. This book is essential reading for anyone in religious studies, anthropology, and the scientific study of religion.

More than one hundred of the world's leading thinkers write about things they believe in, despite the absence of concrete proof

Scientific theory, more often than not, is born of bold assumption, disparate bits of unconnected evidence, and educated leaps of faith. Some of the most potent beliefs among brilliant minds are based on supposition alone -- yet that is enough to push those minds toward making the theory viable.

Eminent cultural impresario, editor, and publisher of "Edge" (www.edge.org), John Brockman asked a group of leading scientists and thinkers to answer the question: What do you believe to be true even though you cannot prove it? This book brings together the very best answers from the most distinguished contributors.

Thought-provoking and hugely compelling, this collection of bite-size thought-experiments is a fascinating insight into the instinctive beliefs of some of the most brilliant minds today.

Are the Jewish arguments against belief in Jesus as mankind's Savior any good? Is Jesus Christ the promised Messiah of the Old Testament's prophecies? Is Christianity derived from ancient Roman or Greek pagan mystery religions? Is the New Testament historically reliable? Was Jesus of Nazareth God according to the New Testament? Did Gnosticism influence Christianity? Since some 185,000 Americans have converted to Judaism according to a 1990 survey, the arguments of such groups as Jews for Judaism against Christianity can't be dismissed lightly. Using solid scholarship and rigorous logic, A Zeal For God Not According to Knowledge defends Christianity against the arguments of its Jewish critics, such as Samuel Levine, Michoel Drazin, Tovia Singer, and Hyam Maccoby. This book demonstrates that the New Testament is historically reliable, denies that Christian doctrines and sacraments can be derived from pagan beliefs and practices, shows that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah based on the Old Testament's prophecies, and proves that the New Testament teaches the Deity of Christ. Jewish friends, coworkers, and relatives, and Jews interested in objectively considering the claims of Christianity while searching for spiritual truth about whether Jesus is their Messiah also.

In The Future of Religion and the Religion of the Future, Theodore John Rivers explores the changing relationship between technology and religion. Rivers draws upon his expertise in the fields of medieval and religious history to discuss how the promotion of Christianity and monasticism in the Middle Ages began a process that has lent religious undertones to the way in which we interact with modern technology. Rivers ultimately suggests that the growing presence of technology makes it a likely candidate for the next religious form, competing with all the major religions in place today.

The cognitive science of religion is a new discipline that looks at the roots of religious belief in the cognitive architecture of the human mind. The Roots of Religion deals with the philosophical and theological implications of the cognitive science of religion which grounds religious belief in human cognitive structures: religious belief is 'natural', in a way that even scientific thought is not. Does this new discipline support religious belief, undermine it, or is it, despite many claims, perhaps eventually neutral? This subject is of immense importance, particularly given the rise of the 'new atheism'. Philosophers and theologians from North America, UK and Australia, explore the alleged conflict between truth claims and examine the roots of religion in human nature. Is it less 'natural' to be an atheist than to believe in God, or gods? On the other hand, if we can explain theism psychologically, have we explained it away. Can it still claim any truth? This book debates these and related issues.

This book documents and investigates the stories we have told and continue to tell about technology-now the dominant feature of our civilization-in fiction, non-fiction, film, and advertising. It answers important questions about the meanings people ascribe to technology, the hopes and fears we express in the different narratives, the effect of those narratives upon us, and the new forms of myth those narratives represent. Narratives of Technology offers an approach grounded in the humanities, adding another perspective to that of social scientists and technologists.

In Fungible Life Aihwa Ong explores the dynamic world of cutting-edge bioscience research, offering critical insights into the complex ways Asian bioscientific worlds and cosmopolitan sciences are entangled in a tropical environment brimming with the threat of emergent diseases. At biomedical centers in Singapore and China scientists map genetic variants, disease risks, and biomarkers, mobilizing ethnicized "Asian" bodies and health data for genomic research. Their differentiation between Chinese, Indian, and Malay DNA makes fungible Singapore's ethnic-stratified databases that come to "represent" majority populations in Asia. By deploying genomic science as a public good, researchers reconfigure the relationships between objects, peoples, and spaces, thus rendering "Asia" itself as a shifting entity. In Ong's analysis, Asia emerges as a richly layered mode of entanglements, where the population's genetic pasts, anxieties and hopes, shared genetic weaknesses, and embattled genetic futures intersect. Furthermore, her illustration of the contrasting methods and goals of the Biopolis biomedical center in Singapore and BGI Genomics in China raises questions about the future direction of cosmopolitan science in Asia and beyond.

A growing problem of interest in the field of science and technology policy is that the next generation of innovations is arriving at an accelerating rate, and the governance system is struggling to catch up. Current approaches and institutions for effective technology assessment are ill suited and poorly designed to proactively address the multidimensional, interconnected societal impacts of science and technology advancements that are already taking place and expected to continue over the course of the 21st century. This book offers tangible insights into the strategies deployed by well-known, high-profile organizations involved in anticipating the various societal and policy implications of nanotechnology and synthetic biology. It focuses predominantly on an examination of the practices adopted by the often-cited and uniquely positioned Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies in the United States, as well as being informed by comparisons with a range of institutions also interested in embedding forward-looking perspectives in their respective area of innovation. The book lays out one of the first actionable roadmaps that other interested stakeholders can follow when working toward institutionalizing anticipatory governance practices throughout the policymaking process.

A comprehensive biographical guide to the scientific achievements, personal lives, and struggles of women scientists from around the globe. International Women in Science: A Bibliographical Dictionary to 1950 presents the enormous contributions of women outside North America in fields ranging from aviation to computer science to zoology. It provides fascinating profiles of nearly 400 women scientists, both renowned figures like Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie and women we should know better, like Rosalind Franklin, who, along with James Watson and Francis Crick, uncovered the structure of DNA. Students and researchers will see how the lives of these remarkable women unfolded, and how they made their place in fields often stubbornly guarded by men, overcoming everything from limited education and professional opportunities, to indifference, ridicule, and cultural prejudice, to outright hostility and discrimination. Included are a number of living scientists, many of whom provide insights into their lives and scientific times. Those contributions, plus additional previously unavailable material, make this a volume of unprecedented scope and richness.

Why do so many Americans reject the modern theory of evolution? Seeking answers, mathematician Jason Rosenhouse became a regular attendee at creationist conferences and other gatherings. After ten years of attending events like the giant Creation Mega-Conference in Lynchburg, Virginia, and visiting sites like the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, and after hundreds of mostly friendly conversations with creationists of varying stripes, he has emerged with a story to tell, a story that goes well beyond the usual stereotypes of Bible-thumping fanatics railing against coldly rational scientists. Through anecdotes, personal reflections, and scientific and philosophical discussion, Rosenhouse presents a more down-to-earth picture of modern creationism and the people who espouse it. He also tells the story of his own nonbeliever's attempt to understand a major aspect of American religion. Forced to wrestle with his views about religion and science, Rosenhouse found himself drawn into a new world of ideas previously unknown to him, arriving at a sharper understanding of the reality of science versus religion disputes, and how these debates look to those beyond the ivory tower.

What does healing mean for Christians and others in an age of science? How can we combine scientific findings about our bodies, philosophical understanding of our minds and theological investigations about our spirits with a coherent and unified model of the person? How does God continue to create through nature and direct our wandering towards becoming created co-creators capable of ministering to others? The reality of human suffering demands that theology and science mutually inform each other in a shared understanding of nature, humanity, and paths to healing. In Insight to Heal, Mark Graves draws upon systems theory, pragmatic philosophy, and biological and cognitive sciences to deal with wounds that could limit personal growth, and uses information theory, emergence, and Christian theology to define healing as distinct from a return to a prior state of being, but rather to create real possibility in who the person may become.

This book places Indonesia at the forefront of the global debate about the impact of ""disruptive"" digital technologies. Digital technology is fast becoming the core of life, work, culture and identity. Yet, while the number of Indonesians using the internet has followed the upward global trend, some groups - the poor, the elderly, women, the less well-educated, people living in remote communities - are disadvantaged. This interdisciplinary collection of essays by leading researchers and scholars, as well as e-governance and e-commerce insiders, examines the impact of digitalisation on the media industry, governance, commerce, informal sector employment, education, cybercrime, terrorism, religion, artistic and cultural expression, and much more. It presents groundbreaking analysis of the impact of digitalisation in one of the worlds most diverse, geographically vast nations. In weighing arguments about the opportunities and challenges presented by digitalisation, it puts the very idea of a technological revolution into critical perspective.

The battles over evolution, climate change, childhood vaccinations, and the causes of AIDS, alternative medicine, oil shortages, population growth, and the place of science in our country-all are reaching a fevered pitch. Many people and institutions have exerted enormous efforts to misrepresent or flatly deny demonstrable scientific reality to protect their nonscientific ideology, their power, or their bottom line. To shed light on this darkness, Donald R. Prothero explains the scientific process and why society has come to rely on science not only to provide a better life but also to reach verifiable truths no other method can obtain. He describes how major scientific ideas that are accepted by the entire scientific community (evolution, anthropogenic global warming, vaccination, the HIV cause of AIDS, and others) have been attacked with totally unscientific arguments and methods. Prothero argues that science deniers pose a serious threat to society, as their attempts to subvert the truth have resulted in widespread scientific ignorance, increased risk of global catastrophes, and deaths due to the spread of diseases that could have been prevented.

In Industry Unbound, Ari Ezra Waldman exposes precisely how the tech industry conducts its ongoing crusade to undermine our privacy. With research based on interviews with scores of tech employees and internal documents outlining corporate strategies, Waldman reveals that companies don't just lobby against privacy law; they also manipulate how we think about privacy, how their employees approach their work, and how they weaken the law to make data-extractive products the norm. In contrast to those who claim that privacy law is getting stronger, Waldman shows why recent shifts in privacy law are precisely the kinds of changes that corporations want and how even those who think of themselves as privacy advocates often unwittingly facilitate corporate malfeasance. This powerful account should be read by anyone who wants to understand why privacy laws are not working and how corporations trap us into giving up our personal information.

This volume addresses key questions about the puzzle of human origins by focusing on a topic that is largely unexplored thus far, namely, the evolution of human wisdom. How can we best understand the human capacity for wisdom, where did it come from, and how did it emerge? It explores lines of convergence and divergence between Christian theology and evolutionary anthropology in its search to identify different aspects of wisdom. Critical to this discussion are the philosophical difficulties that arise when two very different methodological approaches to the manner of humans becoming wise are brought together. The relative importance and significance of human language is another area of intense debate in defining the meaning of wisdom and its expression. How far and to what extent does a theologically informed wisdom discourse push evolutionary anthropology to formulate new questions and vice versa? This volume shows that there is no simple consonance between evolutionary anthropology and theology. Yet, each discipline has much to learn from the other; the authors are in agreement that even in the midst of an awareness of dissonance and some tension, there can still be mutual respect. The goal of this book is to begin to develop a trans-disciplinary approach to the evolution of human wisdom, where each discipline is challenged to ask questions in a new way. This volume tackles the relationship between theology and science in a fresh way by focusing on a specific theme-wisdom-that is equally generative for both theology and evolutionary anthropology.

The internet could have been purpose-built for fostering the growth of the social movements and citizen initiatives which have had such a significant impact on the political landscape since the 1990s. In "Cyberprotest" the contributors explore the effects of this synergy between ICTs (Information Communication Technologies) and people power, analysing the implications for politics and social policy at both a national and a global level.;Through a number of different international examples answers are sought to questions such as: to what extent and in what forms do social movements use ICTs?; how do new ICTs facilitate new patterns and forms of citizen mobilization?; how does this use affect the relationship between social movements and their members?; how do ICTs change the way social movement organizations communicate with each other?; and how do they affect the way these movements mobilize and intervene in public debates and political conflicts?

The convergence of online book selling, digital printing, digital document workflow management and the computerization of small parcel logistics created a unique opportunity to create a viable commercial model for printing and supplying books on demand. This innovation was swiftly embraced by the academic publishing community heralding the rescue of the languishing academic monograph. The possibilities captured the imagination of creative academic and niche publishers enabling custom publishing, student editions of monographs, self-compiled wiki books and even the establishment of new university presses and open access publishers. The Impact of Print on-Demand on Academic Books takes an in-depth look at this phenomenon by looking back on two decades of innovation, reviewing the present state of academic publishing with respect to works being printed on demand and compiling the current forecasts and speculation about the future of academic and niche publishing given the impact of print on-demand.

What is a life worth? In the wake of eugenics, new quantitative racist practices that valued life for the sake of economic futures flourished. In The Economization of Life, Michelle Murphy provocatively describes the twentieth-century rise of infrastructures of calculation and experiment aimed at governing population for the sake of national economy, pinpointing the spread of a potent biopolitical logic: some must not be born so that others might live more prosperously. Resituating the history of postcolonial neoliberal technique in expert circuits between the United States and Bangladesh, Murphy traces the methods and imaginaries through which family planning calculated lives not worth living, lives not worth saving, and lives not worth being born. The resulting archive of thick data transmuted into financialized "Invest in a Girl" campaigns that reframed survival as a question of human capital. The book challenges readers to reject the economy as our collective container and to refuse population as a term of reproductive justice.

Can Christian sin-talk be retrieved within the public sphere? In this contribution to ecotheology, Ernst M. Conradie argues that, amid ecological destruction, discourse on sin can contribute to a multidisciplinary depth diagnosis of what has gone wrong in the world. He confronts some major obstacles related to the plausibility of sin-talk in conversation with evolutionary biology, the cognitive sciences, and animal ethology. He defends an Augustinian insistence that social evil, rather than natural evil, is our primary predicament. If the root cause of social evil is sin, then a Christian confession of sin may yet yield good news for the whole earth.