Our Bodies Are Selves is a look at what it means to be human in a world where medical technology and emerging ethical insight force us to rethink the boundaries of humanity/spirit and man/machine. This book gives us a fresh look at how our expanding biological views of ourselves and our shared evolutionary history shows us a picture that may not always illumine who and where we are as Christians. Offering up Christian theological views of embodiment, the authors give everyday examples of lives of love, faith, and bodily realities that offer the potential to create new definitions of what it means to be a faith community in an increasingly technological age of medicine.

About the Contributor(s): Mladen Turk is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Elmhurst College. He is the author of Logic: Exercises and Solutions (1995) in Croatian and contributor to several scholarly and reference works in English and Croatian in the area of history and theory of the study of religion and religion and science.

What does it mean to be human in an age of science, technology, and faith? The ability to ask such a question suggests at least a partial answer, in that however we describe ourselves we bear a major role in determining what we will become. In this book, Philip Hefner reminds us that this inescapable condition is the challenge and opportunity of Homo sapiens as the created co-creator. In four original chapters and an epilogue, Hefner frames the created co-creator as a memoirist with an ambiguous legacy, explores some of the roots of this ambiguity, emphasizes the importance of answering this ambiguity with symbols that can interpret it in wholesome ways, proposes a partial theological framework for co-creating such symbols, and applies this framework to the challenge of using technology like artificial intelligence and robotics to create other co-creators in our own image. Editors Jason P. Roberts and Mladen Turk have compiled eight responses to Hefner's work to honor his scholarly career and answer his call to help co-create a more wholesome future in an age of science, technology, and faith.

Joan D. Koss-Chioino and Philip Hefner's new volume is unique in exploring the meaning of spiritual transformation and healing with new research from a scientific perspective. An interdisciplinary group of contributors-anthropological, psychological, medical, theological, and biological scientists-investigate the role of religious communities and healing practitioners, with spiritual transformation as their medium of healing. Individual authors evaluate the meaning of spiritual transformations and the consequences for those who experience it; the contributions of indigenous healing systems; new frameworks for neurological and physiological correlates of transformative religious experiences; the support from neuroscience for the radical empathy and intersubjective exchange that takes place in healing practices; and evidence for universal elements of the healing process. This exciting new book will be an invaluable resource for those generally interested in the role of religion in society, across the sciences, social sciences, and all religious traditions. With a foreword by Solomon H. Katz.

Joan D. Koss-Chioino and Philip Hefner's new volume is unique in exploring the meaning of spiritual transformation and healing with new research from a scientific perspective. An interdisciplinary group of contributors-anthropological, psychological, medical, theological, and biological scientists-investigate the role of religious communities and healing practitioners, with spiritual transformation as their medium of healing. Individual authors evaluate the meaning of spiritual transformations and the consequences for those who experience it; the contributions of indigenous healing systems; new frameworks for neurological and physiological correlates of transformative religious experiences; the support from neuroscience for the radical empathy and intersubjective exchange that takes place in healing practices; and evidence for universal elements of the healing process. This exciting new book will be an invaluable resource for those generally interested in the role of religion in society, across the sciences, social sciences, and all religious traditions. With a foreword by Solomon H. Katz.

This collection of essays by various scientists, theologians, philosophers and other academics explores the important dialogue between science and religion. The editors emphasize the importance of three main convergences: different sciences converging to give a coherent story of humankind's place in the cosmos, different religions converging to gain mutual understanding and harmony, and both science and religion converging as people realize their explanations and roles needn't be mutually exclusive. Contributors address ideas on the evolution of matter, life and mind; the evolution of language and brain; consciousness and creativity; religion as a moral framework; science and the Qur'an; and religion and enviromental ethics. This study is the sequel to "Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends".