November 21, 2014|7:19 am

Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He is the author of 25 books and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.

Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is one of the preeminent Christian leaders of our day. He is as clear-headed as he is courageous, always a source of truth and sanity in the midst of a deeply confused culture.

Dr. Mohler has also played a significant role in addressing the issue of homosexuality and the church, demonstrating both humility and conviction, thereby helping to set an example for pastors and leaders trying to navigate their way through an emotional and spiritual minefield.

How do we stand against gay activism in our society while at the same time reaching out with compassion and sensitivity to those who identify as LGBT?

Summarizing his comments at the recent national conference on "The Gospel, Homosexuality, and the Future of Marriage" held by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Mohler explained how his views have shifted on the subject of "sexual orientation."

He wrote, "I had previously denied the existence of sexual orientation. I, along with many other evangelicals, did so because we did not want to accept the sexual identity structure that so often goes with sexual orientation. I still reject that notion of sexual identity. But I repented of denying the existence of sexual orientation because denying it was deeply confusing to people struggling with same-sex attraction. Biblical Christians properly resist any suggestion that our will can be totally separated from sexual desire, but we really do understand that the will is not a sufficient explanation for a pattern of sexual attraction. Put simply, most people experiencing a same-sex attraction tell of discovering it within themselves at a very early age, certainly within early puberty. As they experience it, a sexual attraction or interest simply 'happens,' and they come to know it."

For Dr. Mohler, though, this presented no problem at all, given the biblical description of human beings as fallen and flawed: "In some sense, each of us finds within ourselves a pattern of desires sexual and otherwise we did not ask for, but for which we are then and now fully responsible. When it comes to a same-sex attraction, the orientation is sinful because it is defined by an improper object someone of the same sex. Of course, those of us whose sexual orientation is directed toward the opposite sex are also sinners, but the sexual orientation is not itself sinful."

How then should we deal with same-sex attraction?

According to Dr. Mohler, while refusing to agree with the world's affirmation of same-sex attraction, "At the same time, our biblically-informed understanding of sexual orientation will chasten us from having any confidence that there is any rescue from same-sex attraction to be found in any secular approach, therapy, or treatment. Christians know that the only remedy for sin is the atonement of Christ and the gift of salvation. The only hopeful answer to sin, in any form, is the Gospel of Christ. Understanding the complexity of sexual orientation and sexual sin should make us all cling to the Gospel ever more closely, and to the authority and truthfulness of the Bible ever more faithfully."

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Was Al Mohler Right About Sexual Orientation and Secular Counseling?

Appreciation

Beatrice Bruteau, a scholar, teacher, interspiritual pioneer, and intrepid explorer of the evolutionary edge of consciousness, died Nov. 16 at the age of 84. Her passing exemplified her signature brand of clarity, freedom and intentionality, traits that for more than five decades have been the hallmarks of her teaching presence among us and that she now bequeaths to us as both a legacy and a continuing invitation.

Mention the name Beatrice Bruteau, and I dare say that most Christian contemplatives will never have heard of her. She never attained the "superstar" status of a Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, Bede Griffiths, or David Steindl-Rast. By her own choice, Beatrice preferred to remain slightly below the radar, where she exerted her quiet presence as one of the most powerful shaping influences on contemporary mystical theology, interspirituality, and contemplative practice. In her lifetime, she was a friend, colleague and mentor to all the people mentioned above (and dozens more of comparable stature) and a teacher to thousands of appreciative students, including me. Those who had the privilege of working with her directly speak of the clarity and precision of her mind, the luminosity of her vision, and the down-to-earth practicality of her contemplative practice.

Rigorously trained, she held two degrees in mathematics and a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham University. In addition to her highly articulate Christianity, she was also a longtime student of Vedanta and one of the early pioneers of East-West dialogue. She wrote books on Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and was one of the founders of the American Teilhard Association in 1967. Her most important works include Radical Optimism (1993), The Easter Mysteries (1995), What We Can Learn from the East (1995), and God's Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World (1997). In all of these works, she brought her deep understanding of non-dual states of consciousness as well as her scientific training and rigor to the mysticism of the West.

Her passion was the study of evolutionary consciousness, and over the course of her long teaching career, she lived to see this passion come into its own as one of the most significant spiritual movements of our times. In particular, her influence on two fellow Fordham graduates, Ewert Cousins and Ilia Delio, has revolutionized the playing field upon which the venerable intellectual tradition of Catholic humanism is now unfolding.

Despite these stellar academic credentials, Beatrice chose to "think globally, act locally." For most of her long career, she lived in and around Winston-Salem, N.C., where she and her husband, Fordham professor James Somerville, founded the Schola Contemplationis, a center for the study and practice of the contemplative lifestyle according to the classical traditions of both East and West. For more than 30 years, their "mind-bending" monthly newsletter, The Roll, was painstakingly composed in their home office, run off on an old mimeograph machine, and hand-mailed to their small but devoted mailing list. A Southern lady to the nines, she dressed impeccably for every occasion, refused to travel by air, and insisted that coffee and tea be served in proper china cups, not in -- heaven forbid -- mugs!

My own relationship with Beatrice Bruteau began in the late 1980s, when I discovered her three-part article "Prayer and Identity" in the now-defunct Contemplative Review and had my spiritual universe quietly but completely overturned. Correspondence soon led to a personal visit and a mentoring relationship that would span the next three decades. I am honored to report that the very first public spiritual teaching I ever gave was at her behest, to her Schola Contemplationis group, in the early 1990s. In 2007, I was able in a small way to repay that gift when the Sewanee Theological Review invited me to republish her original "Prayer and Identity" article, together with a short commentary, in an issue dedicated to "Spirituality, Contemplation, and Transformation."

On a very personal note, the most powerful debt of gratitude I owe her was her unflagging support during the writing and publication of my first book, Love is Stronger than Death. Still in a very tender place following the death of my hermit teacher Raphael Robin, not fully trusting whether my spiritual intuitions of an ongoing journey between us were on target or simply a concocted fantasy, I shared the manuscript with her, and in a powerful way, she offered validation and the encouragement to continue. Her luminous support at this critical threshold of my life is one of the main reasons I am where I am today.

During this past decade, our connection grew a bit more tenuous as my life got busier and hers gradually became more concentrated around that final stage of the journey, "growing into age." In about the fall of 2013 I began to hear rumors that Alzheimer's disease was starting to affect her magnificent brain, and in spring 2014, following a conference in Greensboro, N.C., I was able to pay her what turned out to be a final visit. While it was indeed obvious that the disease was making some inroads on the habitual operations along the horizontal axis of life, as soon as we leaped into spiritual issues, her vast mind still took over like the lioness it was. Her teaching continued luminous and more and more vast.

Little did any of us at the time -- maybe even Beatrice -- suspect the final surprising denouement with which she would make her exit from this life. As it so happened, one of my younger students, Joshua Tysinger, had begun his seminary studies at Wake Forest, right there in Winston-Salem, at just about the time that Beatrice's life was rounding toward its end. I suggested -- and Josh was alert enough to follow up on the suggestion -- that having a world-class spiritual master right in town was an opportunity not to be missed. He began to pay her regular visits, and it soon became clear that a lineage transmission was in process. As Josh willingly and sensitively helped Beatrice and Jim navigate the horizontal axis, her brilliant final imparting of a lifetime of spiritual wisdom and spiritual fire (mostly over lunch at the K&W Cafeteria, with, yes, proper coffee cups!) is an exchange I suspect will not leave the planet unchanged.

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Interspiritual pioneer Beatrice Bruteau loomed large in the contemplative universe

Well-known author, physician and spiritual guru Deepak Chopra was in El Paso on Wednesday night to discuss how combining modern medicine with spirituality is key to creating a better health care system.

Chopra, who has written more than 80 books including 22 New York Times best sellers, was the guest speaker for the latest event in the University Medical Center Foundation's Health & Wellness series. The focus of his speech at the Abraham Chavez Theater was on the current state of health care and what improvements need to be made, Chopra said.

"We have a tendency to confuse health care reform with well-being," Chopra said. "Health care reform as it is currently practiced in the United States has nothing to do with health. It is insurance reform."

In order to improve health care and the well-being of people, a focus needs to be made on more than just the physical aspect of modern medical and incorporate the spiritual and religious aspects of life, Chopra said. This issue is the main focus of Chopra's latest book, "The Future of God."

"So many people in the scientific field are naive about what reality is. They think the only world that exist is the physical because you can find evidence for everything physical," he said. "Atheists have a very naive idea about reality and then there are religious fundamentalists that have naive ideas about the images of God," Chopra said.

Barron White, the owner of ESL International, a language school, said he became more aware of alternative medicine after his wife died from cancer a year ago. He said he was at the event to get more insight on how modern and alternative medicines can combine to help treat people.

"My wife died of cancer, so this (Chopra's speech) is of interest to me, I am here to learn more about this issue," White said. "So coming here kind of helps solidifies and valid that even though chemicals are used, there are other ways to help and treat people."

Aaron Martinez may be reached at 546-6249.

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Physician, spiritual guru Deepak Chopra visits El Paso to discuss state of health care

Nov. 18, 2014 11:35 a.m.

Hospice care may not readily come to mind as an intersection for science and spirituality, but for one patient and his chaplain, the connection theyve forged was built from discussions about these very topics.

Dr. Watson, a retired internist and a current patient receiving care from Hospice of the Red River Valley, approaches the world from a clinical, scientific perspective.

During a hospital visit in 2013, Dr. Watsons doctors took a chest x-ray and found a mass in his right lung. They encouraged him to look into hospice care. I said, I dont really know what that is, Dr. Watson said, so my doctor explained it to me, and thats how I got started.

Dr. Watson is acutely aware of how important face-to-face visits are for establishing rapport with patients, and he says the visits from Hospice staff have been very helpful. Im glad to see them, he shared. They answer my questions. They check my vitals, too. Its interesting to talk to different people.

According to Karin, Hospice of the Red River Valley chaplain, Dr. Watson has taken great care to interview the Hospice team members. He learns something about each one and shows interest in us not only as skilled clinicians but as people with lives outside of our professions, she said.

Dr. Watson has been married to his wife Delores for 65 years, and they have four children. Hes always been a social person and active in his community. He is a member of the American Legion, The United Methodist Church of Detroit Lakes and was a long-time volunteer with the local Boys and Girls Club. As a band leader and trumpet player, Dr. Watson started the big band group Doc and the Scrubs and established Tuesdays in the Park, a popular music series in Detroit Lakes that continues to this day.

Not only does Dr. Watson enjoy big band and classical music, he is also an avid reader. He reads material related to his medical profession and has an equal interest in theology, church history and biblical literature. Being a critical thinker and scientist led Dr. Watson to question some of the literal understandings of scripture and the God that he grew up with, and his spirit is energized by discussions around these topics.

His first question during each visit with the chaplain is, What are you reading? Karin was inspired to read several books that Dr. Watson suggested, which enhanced their visits and conversation. He doesnt need answers to all the big questions, Karin shared, but he loves the pursuit of knowledge and understanding in and of itself. In fact, when Dr. Watson is asked about what is to follow this life, he says with a twinkle in his eye, I am excited to find out.

Every person who receives Hospice support utilizes the skilled staff in varied ways. Dr. Watson said his visits with the chaplain are what hes appreciated the most about Hospice. And for Dr. Watson and Karin, the relationship theyve built has been an education in friendship.

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Passion for Learning Bonds Hospice Patient and Chaplain

Christopher Nolan is a visionary filmmaker famous for producing intelligent blockbusters such as Inception and the Batman Trilogy. His latest ambitious project is a sci-fi space-travel epic clocking in at nearly three hours. With a budget of $165 million and an all-star cast, it is not surprising that it is already a big box office hit. But beyond entertainment, the film also explores some big questions.

I went to see the film the same day space history was made when the European Space Agency landed a space probe on a comet 500 million km away from earth. With the gap between space science fiction and scientific space reality ever narrowing, these questions carry extra weight. The following reflections do not include any spoilers no information given will exceed what is revealed in the trailers.

1. Can our planet sustain us?

The set up for Interstellar is yet another dystopian future. This time it is not a plague, an alien invasion or a meteor that threatens humanity's fragile existence, but a global food shortage. Farmers have become the world's heroes and the central character is a retired astronaut-turned-agriculturalist: Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey.Interstellar raises important questions for us as a planet with a population now well over seven billion. Are our food sources resilient enough to feed our population?

Unfortunately the movie raises the issue of global hunger by focusing on a US family in the Midwest. A film about people starving in Sudan or a family forced to scavenge for food on the rubbish tips of Manila would probably not have been as compelling. Global hunger is already an issue in our world affecting over 800 million people each day, but it seems it is only a crisis when the USA is threatened this betrays the myopia of our western culture to poverty.

Environmentalist George Monbiot has criticised the film for not mentioning climate change for fear of upsetting a US audience. It reminds us that Hollywood's sensibilities do not just determine how a film plays in the USA, but how the global movie-going audience is continually shaped by an America-centric view of the world.

Having raised the challenge of our planet's inadequate resources, the film's solution is not global co-operation. Nor, surprisingly, does the hope of the entire planet rest on the shoulders of a single white hero, as in so many other Hollywood apocalyptic scenarios.

"We are not meant to save the world, we are meant to leave it" Professor Brand

The film takes a strange ecological approach. We have consumed our world so we now need to move on and consume a new one. Monbiot recognises that this is actually not a new theme it also lies at the heart of other exodus science fiction plotlines such as Battlestar Galactica, Red Planet and even Superman. Where has this idea come from? How widely held is it the view that it doesn't matter how badly we pillage our planet's resources? As Christians we must ensure that the subtleties of the film do not either blind us to the reality of food shortage crises around the world, or the responsibility to care for our planet and its people.

2. Is time travel possible?

View original post here:
Krish Kandiah: Five big questions raised by Interstellar

Lynne Malcolm: Hello, you're with All in the Mind on RN, I'm Lynne Malcolm. And today the powerful connection between the mind, the body and our health.

Excerpt from The Connection:

It was always obvious in the ancient wisdom traditions that mind and body were interconnected, but somewhere along the line we created a dichotomy as if they were separate.

We came to believe that everything could be cured by drugs and surgeries, whereas to this day they can't.

When we talk about much of mind body phenomena we are talking about the nonphysical mind affecting the physical body. That's not allowed for in the Western scientific paradigm.

Modern science has shown us that the mind has the power to heal. We should use that capacity.

George Jelinek: I think this is a notion and a paradigm whose time has come. It makes much more sense for us to look at how people can be empowered to take control of their own health, to use their own initiative, their own healing resources to change their lifestyles rather than rely on a pharmaceutical maker to provide us with a drug that might ameliorate the symptoms for some time but do nothing much about the underlying disease.

Lynne Malcolm: That's George Jelinek, professor of emergency medicine at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne.

Before him, an excerpt from The Connection. It's a documentary produced by a young woman whose chronic illness led her to investigate the compelling field of mind body medicine. Shannon Harvey:

Shannon Harvey: Mind body medicine is the application of some of the remarkable research that is coming out proving that our mind, our brain and all our other systems in our body all interact to have an impact on our health. Scientists are calling the field psycho neuro immunology, and what they are talking about there is the way that the brain interacts with the immune system interacting with the endocrine system. And it has only really been in the last 5 to 10 years that scientists have been actually able to look at the mind and how it directly impacts our body, because of the development of wonderful scientific technologies like MRIs that enable us to actually look at what's going on in the brain and then be able to extend from that to look at what's going on in things like the immune system.

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Mind body connection

11/11/2014 at 02:17 PM ET

Though he might be the only one, Stephen Colbert is praising the creators ofDewitos, the new Doritos-flavored Mountain Dew.

Tonight, I come to you with news that there is a scientific breakthrough giving millions of Americas hope for a better tomorrow, he said during Mondays episode of Colbert Report. I sit here as eyewitness to history, privileged to say the following words: Mountain Dew now tastes like Doritos.

The new flavor, which is being tested on college campuses, has been described as if you shoved a handful of Doritos in your mouth and chugged some [Mountain] Dew at the same time.

But Colbert, 50, suggests he may know one group of people thankful for the unique flavor.

Thanks to PepsiCo innovators, those who want to drink their nacho no longer have to find the AMC concession stand where no one is watching the cheese pump, he says.

The satirical TV host even gets a bit philosophical about it all.

Dewitos bring us to the very intersection of science and spirituality and opens the taste buds to an infinite food court of the mind, he says. So I salute the snackologists who pioneered this Dewitos breakthrough.

Ana Calderone

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WATCH: Stephen Colbert 'Salutes' the Creators of Doritos-Flavored Mountain Dew

Sunday marked the 80th birthday of Carl Sagan, the spiritual scientist. Author James Croft writes that Sagan, who died in 1996 at age 62, found science to be a profoundly spiritual pursuit.

For Sagan, science was not just a technical pursuit, nor was it simply about the discovery of new facts, Croft writes.

I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship, Sagan wrote in The Varieties of Scientific Experience.

Croft writes, "This may be surprising to some, but one of the foremost icons of todays rationalist movement believed passionately that to preclude spirituality from a relationship with science was to demean science, as well as spirituality."

But here is Sagan's definition of Nature (with a capital N): reverence; awe; celebration; magnificence; intricacy; beauty; soaring; elation; humility; joining and merging with the Cosmos.

Sagans spiritual approach to science, Croft writes in a Religion News Service piece, is important for atheists, skeptics, and Humanists to rememberbecause it offers a different view of the relationship between science and religion than the battleground itis so often portrayed as today.

Read the rest of the story here: http://chrisstedman.religionnews.com/2014/11/09/atheists-carl-sagan-lead/

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Carl Sagan: the spiritual scientist

If the pseudoscientific woo about love and time travel in Interstellar pissed you off, you aren't alone. Though Christopher Nolan's gorgeous space opera isn't the first science fiction film to descend into a morass of new age platitudes, here's why it should be the last.

Spoilers for Interstellar ahead.

Let's get something clear. There are no science fiction movies that "get it right" perfectly when it comes to physics and other areas of science. Any story that involves interstellar travel is by definition based on speculation. We have no idea how faster-than-light travel would work, so we rely on semi-scientific tropes, from wormhole travel and interdimensional jumps to hypersleep and brain uploading. These tropes are all based on contemporary scientific understanding, but of course they are also wild extrapolations that may ultimately turn out to be complete bullshit.

But there's a difference between wormhole travel, which is depicted superbly in Interstellar, and the idea that love is a "fifth dimension" that can allow a man to jump inside a black hole and travel backwards in time to communicate with his 10-year-old daughter. This is what we are asked to believe in Interstellar, whose climactic scene involves Cooper flying into the black hole Gargantua. Once he's gone inside, he's rescued by mysterious, fifth-dimensional beings who put him inside a tesseract box where time behaves like space we can see millions of versions of his daughter's room around him, each representing a slice of time.

So far, we're on weird but still relatively solid ground when it comes to speculative science. Physicist Kip Thorne, who consulted on the movie, writes in a book called The Science of Interstellar that he could imagine such an event being plausible. Other physicists disagree with him, but that's not the problem. The real issue is that Cooper figures out how to contact his daughter by recalling what his colleague Brand told him that love is a "force" that transcends dimensions just like time does. Using the force of "love" to guide him through the bewildering array of time-rooms, he finally finds the exact right version of his daughter to communicate with. And then he sends a message to her through time.

This is an example of confusing physics with metaphysics, or assuming that observable phenomena like gravity are the same as psychological states like love. Put another way, it blurs the line between science and spirituality without ever admitting that's what's going on.

Anyone who has seen the movie The Fifth Element is no stranger to this idea. The "fifth element" of the title is, in fact, love. Which turns out to be a physical force that can save the world. This idea is hinted at in widely-condemned pseudoscience documentary What the Bleep Do We Know, which suggests that quantum mechanics have revealed that anything we believe can come true because our minds affect quantum reality. That is most definitely not what quantum physics suggests.

Again, the issue here isn't with saying that spiritual beliefs can intermingle with scientific reality. The problem is with category confusion. Just because two things are equally important does not mean they are the same. There is absolutely no evidence that love transcends time, but there is significant physical evidence that other dimensions do.

This notion that love "transcends" space and time also makes an appearance in the otherwise rationality-centric movie Contact. In that film, based on work by Carl Sagan, the main character takes a journey through space/time and communicates with aliens who take the form of her father. The idea is that they are so alien that they can only appear to her by taking on the form of a person she loves. Ultimately, the suggestion in Contact like in Interstellar is that love is a force we can measure using physics.

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Stop Putting New Age Pseudoscience in Our Science Fiction

MCCONAUGHEY AND HATHAWAY. Race against time to save the human race from extinction.

In Interstellar, the future of the human race is in dire straits 10 years after an epidemic of devastating blight decimates much of its food supply, resulting in widespread famine and alarming dust storms. The world relies on corn, the only viable crop left, to feed its six billion inhabitants.

The urgent questions director Christopher Nolan (Inception) raises in his spectacularly immersive sci-fi adventure are as terrifying as they are increasingly plausible: What do we do if Earth ceases to be viable for human habitation? Are there other worlds in our solar system and beyond that can sustain life?

The universeor a Higher Being, as the film boldly suggestsworks in mysterious ways, as does Nolans visionary film, which attempts to answer those questions by springing one tantalizing surprise after another, as it sends Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon and a witty robot called L.A.R.S. hopscotching through space and time.

When a wormhole, which creates shortcuts between widely separated regions of spacetime, is discovered near Saturn, widowed former space engineer-turned-farmer Cooper (McConaughey) is called in by a NASA-backed underground agency to lead a four-man missionto explore potentially habitable planets on the other side of the wormhole!

Coopers skills have been deemed useless ever since the world decided to disband its armies and turn its focus on farming. He must retrace the intergalactic trajectory taken by veteran space explorer, Dr. Mann (Matt Damon), and leave behind his children (Timothee Chalamet, Mackenzie Foy)with no assurance for a return trip!

Nolan mesmerizes with a film that transcends the limitations of space and time. Every second counts as Cooper, Dr. Amelia Brand (Hathaway), Doyle (Wes Bentley) and Romilly (David Gyasi) explore the flood-ravaged terrain of a seemingly viable but ultimately sterile planet.

Every hour spent on these planets is equivalent toseven years of Earth time! Coopers face is a treasure trove of contrasting emotions when he sees the continually aging faces of his loved ones back home (Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, Casey Affleck)he can receive video messages, but cant reply to them!

Lending credibility and plausibility to Interstellars limitless cinematic canvas is theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, whose work unraveling the most exotic mysteries of the universe forms the scientific backbone of its script.

In the majestic universe Thorne conjures up with Nolan, time is represented as a physical dimension that utilizes love (!) as a quantifiable tool used to reconcile the laws of relativity and quantum mechanics. The production questions the role we play in the larger scheme of things. If science can explain everything around us, who, then runs them with clockwork precision?

Originally posted here:
McConaughey, Hathaway spring tantalizing surprises in Interstellar