Pope Francis' tough side came out Thursday. The mailed, hierarchic fist finally emerged from the velvet, pastoral glove. The pope received Fr. John Jenkins and the board of trustees of the University of Notre Dame, and he gave them a tongue-lashing. He criticized Notre Dame for failing to abide by the norms for Catholic identity set forth in Ex Corde Ecclesiae. The pope told the university leaders they had "prostituted" their Catholic identity by inviting President Barack Obama to give a graduation speech. And he warned them darkly that if they did not refuse to comply with the HHS contraception mandate, he would order them to stop calling themselves a Catholic institution. When Pope Francis finished his speech, he refused the out-stretched hand of Fr. Jenkins and instead wagged his finger at him, like Pope John Paul II did to Ernesto Cardenal in Nicaragua. The pope declined to greet the other members of the delegation and left the room in a huff. On his way out, he murmured in a stage whisper to Cardinal Donald Wuerl: "How can you stand with this riff-raff?"

Of course, none of that happened, but you can be forgiven for thinking that is what happened Thursday at the Vatican if you checked in with the conservative Catholic blogosphere. Fr. Zuhlsdorf cited the pope's comments, cheerfully referring to "Notre Shame University." The inappropriately named Cardinal Newman Society linked to Pope Francis' speech and added their list of grievances against the school. Even my usually balanced friend Rocco Palmo said Pope Francis had "spiked the ball ... for the bishops" in his address to Notre Dame. To his credit, Rocco apparently had second thoughts about his reportage and made some changes in his post. Thus, what was only an "hourlong meeting" in his first post became, before bedtime, "a mostly effusive hourlong meeting."

The sentence that seemed to have all my conservative friends in a lather was when the Holy Father voiced the "hope that the University of Notre Dame will continue to offer unambiguous testimony to this aspect of its foundational Catholic identity, especially in the face of efforts, from whatever quarter, to dilute that indispensable witness." Now, I am not an editor, but I can spot the verb in that sentence, "will continue," and methinks it suggests that the Holy Father wishes the University of Notre Dame to persist in something it is already doing. How that can be seen as spiking a ball, denouncing Notre Dame, or endorsing some of the vile and foolish things that have been said about the school is beyond me.

N.B. It was Archbishop Charles Chaput who said Notre Dame was prostituting its Catholic identity by inviting President Obama and bestowing an honorary doctorate upon him. He cited at the time, and many commentators repeated Thursday, that Notre Dame's decision to invite Obama specifically violated a 2004 USCCB directive that said Catholic institutions should not honor those who oppose the Church's core teachings. Conservatives then and now overlook the fact that the title of that 2004 document was "Catholics in Political Life" and Obama is not a Catholic, but never mind.

The issue of Catholic identity is a real one. Unfortunately, the concept has been hijacked by conservative educational zealots who equate Catholic identity with a checklist of items that happen to tilt to a particular understanding of Catholicism and who, to my mind, perfectly exemplify the "self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism" that Pope Francis warned against in Evangelii Gaudium. If the future of Catholic higher education in this country is Ave Maria University or Steubenville or Christendom College, better to say, if that is the only viable future for Catholic education, we are in trouble. Any bishop who thinks this should ask themselves a simple question. If you were hiring a lawyer, and the only thing you knew about two applicants was that one graduated from Notre Dame law and the other from Ave Maria law, which would you choose? C'mon, be honest. Excellence cannot be precluded from Catholic identity.

I actually believe the issue of Catholic identity goes deeper than even my most reactionary friends tend to think. The issue stirs my Communio leanings to their core. If, as I believe, and the Second Vatican Council taught, "The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear," then the way Catholic intellectuals approach everything, but especially issues relating to their fellow human beings, must be different from the way a non-Christian does. The empty tomb does not mean that 2 plus 2 no longer equals 4, but it does mean that the significance of mathematical, and all other, data is viewed differently. One of the most chilling experiences in my life was going to Auschwitz and reading the documents the Nazis kept, monitoring the increasing efficiency of their operations at the death camp. Here was science perverted. On what basis -- for surely it must be a nonscientific basis -- can we sustain the claim of perversion? So unlike some of my friends on the left, who think the Catholic academy should be a free-for-all, my principal concerns with the conservative checklist mentality is that it short-circuits a discussion that we need to have.

An example, one I think I have used before in these pages: A couple of years back, I was having coffee in New York with a brilliant intellectual whose work I had long admired. At a certain point in the conversation, he said something like this: "Two-thirds of our economic activity is consumption. That can't be sustained economically, environmentally or morally. I believe the Catholic intellectual tradition is the only tradition that even knows how to frame the right questions when it all starts to come apart." That is Catholic identity.

People who have attended Notre Dame tell me that the Catholic identity of the place is palpable. Someday, I hope to visit and ascertain that for myself. I will say that all of my friends who went there loved the experience and speak easily and fluently about how their time at Notre Dame strengthened their faith. To a number, this is the case. But let us assess the school's Catholic identity differently. What role does this university play in the life of the Church?

In November, I wrote about Notre Dame's ACE program, which for 20 years has been helping save Catholic elementary and secondary schools. In Tucson, Ariz., and Tampa, Fla., ACE literally saved five schools from closing, taking them over and turning them around, but here in Washington, D.C., ACE alumni have been a leaven to the parochial schools, and nowhere more than on the issue of Catholic identity.

Notre Dame is also working with Catholic Charities USA, evaluating their programs to see how well they work, how they could be made to work better, bringing the university's best economists and other social scientists to increase the efficacy of the charitable arm of the Church.

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Pope Francis & Notre Dame

Last weeks op-ed, Science and Faith by Evan Keegan, rehashed a series of popular myths and unfortunate misconceptions about the nature of science, faith, and knowledge. These myths do believers and unbelievers alike a disservice, but persist because they legitimize religion by tying it to science (curiously, one never observes scientists trying to legitimize science by tying it to religion). This line of fallacious argument usually consists of two steps: 1. Tie science and religion together by labeling them both beliefs, an equivocal term that encompasses both facts and opinion, and 2. Claim that science has problems only religion can fix.

Keegan asserts that everyone can agree that like religion, science is very much a belief as well. We can all agree that a golf cart and a passenger jet are very much motor vehicles, but Im not crossing the Atlantic in a golf cart. 1 + 1 = 2, and I like poodles are both beliefs, but are fundamentally different statements. 1 + 1 = 3 can also be a beliefa belief may be about a subjective opinion, an objective fact, or a falsehood. Science, in fact, is a method and not a belief.

Science is a gradual but powerful process that takes empirical observations about the world, matches them with systematic explanations, and then refines or throws away such explanations when they contradict evidence. Educated hunches are called hypotheses, very-well supported explanations are theories, and occasionally something becomes a law.

Faith, on the other hand, is a different animal. It, by definition, asks the believer to accept something without a reason. In ancient times, faith began as a series of beliefs to explain the natural world. Organized religions go a step furtherthey espouse a specific dogma as the truth. Modern religion and spirituality navigate a dilemma: usually, a religious belief is either specific enough that science can disprove it (putting the religion at risk) or vague enough that it is unfalsifiablemeaning that it cannot be disproven even hypothetically and is thus not knowledge in a meaningful sense. Successful modern religions must be flexible enough to maintain educated people, but structured enough to fill meaningful social roles.

Religious fundamentalists who refuse to be flexible rely on demonizing science itself and willfully spreading ignorance. This has been and continues to be a source of tremendous human suffering. Whether more moderate religious belief is good or bad, and whether moderate religions are sustainable over the long run is a question Im intentionally evading. Even if one were to take the optimistic view, faith is still bound by knowledge, but is not a source of knowledge. It cannot generate testable predictions. If faith is good at all, it is for purposes very different than scientific inquiry.

Keegan argues that within the field of science, there are principles and theories, which cannot be directly or fully explained, and are generally accepted to be true. This mischaracterizes the nature of science, and the specific examples he uses he describes inaccurately. Science takes natural phenomena and finds deeper patterns (which are usuallyalthough not alwayscauses).

Keegan uses the fact that science does not fully understand gravity as an argument in favor of religion. But there are two possibilities: Either every fact about the universe can be explained by another fact, ad infinitum, or every fact reduces to a series of axioms that are true, just because. In either scenario, we never can explain everything, but science sure can explain a lot. It might be tempting for a believer to say, Stop! Science has hit rock bottom, but given the current rate of scientific discovery, thats unjustified. As the joke goes, a creationist complains about a gap in the fossil record, until an anthropologist discovers a proto-human fitting that gap. Then the creationist says Aha, now there are two gaps! But just for the sake of argument, suppose scientists finally reached those axioms that were true just because. This wouldnt prove that an omnipotent being made them true; in fact, such an appeal to the supernatural would create logical contradictions and raise more questions (like where did the gods come from?) than it would answer.

Keegan argues that God exists outside of time, but a philosopher could invent an infinite number of hypothetical beings that exist outside of time. The only reason anyone ever proposes that the Judeo/Christian/Muslim/Whatever god explains science is because theyve already committed themselves to believing in this concept without a scientific justification and are simply fishing for a justification. This reasoning is backwards, but ironically, this common fallacy has been identified by psychologists as confirmation bias, and has even been explained by evolutionary biology. (Constantly recognizing patterns kept our ancestors alive more than abstract thinking.)

Speaking of infinity, lets address some of the more specific scientific and logical gaps that Keegan would have us fill with god. One such fallacy is Zenos dichotomy paradox (which Keegan confuses with the closely-related paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise). In order to get from point A to point B, one must first travel half the distance, then half the remaining distance (one quarter of the total), then half of that (one eighth of the total), etc. Keegan believes that without the magical hand of God, these numbers would never quite reach one, and wed never be able to walk anywhere. But as Aristotle pointed out over 2,000 years ago, the time it takes to travel each distance at a constant rate is also decreasing towards 0.

In the 1700s Newton and Leibnitz used infinite sums to invent calculus, and in the early 1800s, mathematicians began rigorously defining the concept of a limit: proving from basic mathematical axioms that + + = 1. (Mathematicians have learned a lot about infinite series, as Math 143 and 162 students painfully learn). If you cut a piece of paper in half, and cut the half in half, and keep on cutting, the amount of paper still says the same, illustrating the same mathematic truth.

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Not All Beliefs Are Made Equal

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) January 23, 2014

Hailed by John Robbins, John Perkins, Angeles Arrien, Vicki Robin, Lynne Twist, Julia Butterfly Hill and other great minds of our generation, 'The Holy Universe: A New Story of Creation For The Heart, Soul, and Spirit' breathes life into the cold, scientific worldview of the universe, transforming our physical history into a living storyand provides us with powerful insights into navigating the global ecological, social, and spiritual crises now facing our world, and provocatively argues the crises we face today just might be the best thing that ever happened to humanity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Holy Universe: A New Story of Creation For The Heart, Soul, and Spirit Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: New Story Press (October 2013) ISBN: 9780985933906 Genre: Spirituality | Fiction | Ecospirituality Retail: US $17.95 | CAN $19.95 Distributor: Small Press United ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New author David Christopher left behind lucrative corporate and airline careers to address his lifelong desire for answers to mans eternal question of our place in the Universe. The dialogues he created in The Holy Universe are the result of a fifteen years of deep immersion in the works of new thought leaders such as Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry, Miriam MacGillis, James Lovelock, and celebrated Big History academicians David Christian and Fred Spier. Christopher wrote the book in part for people like him who call themselves spiritual but not necessarily religious. David lives in Northern California.

Inspiring Promotions is a boutique public relations agency dedicated to promoting some of today's best authors and speakers. Visit http://www.inspiringpromotions/authors then contact us to schedule a media appearance at 415-250-1380 or email suzanna(at)inspiringpromotions(dot)com.

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New Author Hailed by Experts as a ‘Kahlil Gibran for the 21st Century’

The words molecular biology thriller dont come up a lot when describing movies, but director Mike CahillsI Origins aims to be different. The film, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this week, revolves around around the concept ofirreducible complexity, the argument put forth by proponents of intelligent design who believe some biological systems are too intricate to have evolved naturally.Its not an easy concept to cram into a suspense thriller, but Cahill had a guiding principle: Make a movie compelling enough that even an evolutionary biologist or staunch atheist might stop and ponder.

In the film, a young molecular biology Ph.D. student named Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) is researching the development of the eyes organs often cited by intelligent design proponents as examples of irreducible complexity in an attempt to put the argument to rest forever. In the process, he discovers that eyes may not be the unique fingerprints we think they are, and may even have deeper and more ethereal purposes. The story is told from the perspective of Ian,a scientist and skeptic who was partly inspired by one of the most noted evolutionary biologists and staunch atheists in popular culture, The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins.

I really got into Richard Dawkins [while making this movie] and kind of based the character off of him, said Pitt. If you could you convince Dawkins, then you will convince everybody. So we were setting up a really big challenge.

(Spoiler Alert: Some spoilers for I Origins follow.)

Will I Origins succeed in this quest? Eh, probably not. In a funny observation on Film.com, James Rocchi wrote, at one point, Ian reads a Richard Dawkins book, and you can imagine Dawkins popping into the scene and saying to Cahill, like Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall, You clearly know nothing about my work

Michael Pitt

I Origins isnt truly out to scientifically challenge the famed evolutionary biologist on the merits of his work, however, only to use them as a conceptual framework for exploring a fantastical metaphysical possibility a riff on the eyes being windows to the soul.Its believed that the irises of the eyes are as unique as fingerprints, but after Ian meets a Sofi(Astrid Bergs-Frisbey), a girl with unusually beautiful eyes, he discovers that she may have an eye-twin somewhere out there. Its a finding that leads the character to question if there really could be a god in the gaps.

My role models are scientists, my favorite people in the world are scientists, Im obsessed with scientists. I think what they do is magnificent, Cahill said. I also hold in the highest respect people in various religious communities. Im [just] interested in where those intersect.In addition to Dawkins, Cahill also cites the Dalai Lamas The Universe in a Single Atom, and the works of Carl Sagan as influences on his work.

The intersection of science and faith is a ripe topic for discussion and has been for quite some time but its a topic that doesnt get tackled much in Hollywood, especially not in narrative films. In recent memory only Prometheus and Contact, come to mind. So even though occasionally Cahills film treads on the sacred ground of trying to turn skeptics into soul-searchers, his film is to be commended for trying to do something most films dont. Sci-fi spiritual journeys arent everyones jam, but if youre into it, I Origins ruminates on the divide between faith and science in a way that feels strangely intimate.

Despite the recent announcement that the film had picked up the Alfred P. Sloan Prize, an award for science-themed movies, critical unanimity seems unlikely. According to varying reviews out at Sundance, where the film was picked up for distribution by Fox Searchlight on Monday, I Origins was either a movie weighed down by drab scene work and inelegant storytelling or the best science vs. faith film since Contact.

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A Smart Movie That Questions Evolution (Yes, It's Possible!)

For seven years, painter Doris Colbert Kennedy has been searching for God in infinitesimally small spaces. She's read about quantum physics, from the cosmic to the gluinoscopic in scale. Guided solely by intuition, she's documented her journey in oil paint on 30 canvases that will be on display in Spirit and Memory: Contemporary Expressions of Cultural Heritage at the City Gallery. Curated by the renowned artist Jonathan Green, the show also includes work by artists Alvin Staley and Amiri Farris. Green says when creating a show, he seeks artists who demonstrate a great deal of mastery with their materials and techniques. Kennedy, Staley, and Farris have each exhibited all over the United States and have taught art at the university level. Whether their work is realism or more abstract in style, a thread of spirituality weaves through their explorations.

Kennedy describes her collection as intuitive realism. "This is a discovery of mysteries," she says. "My paintings are answers to questions about the nature of reality."

Her canvases abound with rich, multi-layered colors. Their lines move with soft grace, tremendous velocity, or sometimes a little of both. Each one took months to create. She applies paint in sweeping strokes, wipes it off, and then, once the layers dry, adds more paint. For Kennedy, returning to a painting takes effort. She has to stop and re-focus on its mindset and energy. One painting, "Edge of Coherence," transformed itself several times prior to completion. Only when each one is finished does Kennedy step back, ask its meaning, and assign a title.

Kennedy hails from Washington, D.C., where she was the artist-in-residence at Howard University, one of the nation's oldest and most esteemed black universities. In addition to Howard, she has taught at the Corcoran School of Art, American University, the Maryland College of Art and Design, and the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. Locally, she volunteers with students at Burns Elementary, which she says is a great school. "The kids are marvelous. There's so much potential there for what I want to do."

While working on her current collection, she delved into quantum physics, reading physicist's Brian Greene's book, The Fabric of the Cosmos, and Lynn McTaggart's The Field, which explains how quantum physics works in people's lives.

For Kennedy, intuition regularly collides with the cosmos. While painting "World Sheets," she was studying string theory, trying to decide whether she agreed with its ideas. "I set the canvases on the floor and stepped back to look at them," she says. "I felt this force, like the path that swept out from space, like a string."

When the painting debuted at the American Center for Physics in College Park, Md., an audience member at one of her talks told Kennedy she had just returned from India where she witnessed a religious ceremony of a deity being reinstalled. Part of the ceremony involved three priests, each standing at a fire. She said the bands of colored smoke rising toward the temple bore a striking resemblance to the patterns and colors in Kennedy's painting. Kennedy says she has never visited India nor studied its religious ceremonies.

Physicist Margie Morse felt a similar pang of familiarity when she saw the diptych "What Are Space and Time Really, and Can We Do Without Them?" Morse will discuss her experience with the painting in detail during an artist talk on Feb. 9.

The Rev. Ed Kosak of the Unity Church of Charleston will also be part of that discussion, representing the God part of the equation. Kennedy says she encountered Kosak through a bit of kismet. Upon first moving to Charleston, she met a woman who asked, rather spontaneously, if she was an artist and then urged her to check out the Unity Church's Sunday services so she could introduce Kennedy to two of her friends. One was a fellow artist, Elena, with whom Kennedy would become friends and share a studio space. The other was Rev. Kosak, a Unity Minister with a knack for inspiring and energizing his congregation with his Sunday sermons.

"His church is so unique," says Kennedy. "So many unique things happen. That woman I met could read my energy. It's not serendipity, it's bigger. It's a big collapse of energy, things falling into place."

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For Doris Colbert Kennedy, painting reveals the mysteries of the universe

FMT LETTER: From TK Lee, via e-mail

In each and every divinely ordained religion, its author acknowledges the presence of the one true Creator and who is attributed with every conceivable name and quality from Fashioner of the universe, the Essence of Essences, the Unknowable, the Divine Force, the Absolute, the most Merciful, the Almighty, the All Wise, the all Compassionate to Love.

These prophets,saviours or messengers attested that their revelation descended from the Almighty and they never acclaimed what they revealed as their own. All created things, from the cosmos to the sub-atomic world, owe their existence to this One Creator.

Can we comprehend or know the Creator? It is foolish to think that we can pin down this Divine with all the names and attributes we can imagine or fully describe just one of its qualities. Take for example, the attribute Justice the ocean of divine wisdom surges within this exalted word, while the books of the world cannot contain its inner significance.

It is utterly impossible for human beings to describe the indescribable Ancient Eternity, the most manifest of the manifest and the most hidden of the hidden, let alone conceive the all Powerful Being in our finite minds. Can an ant, a living creature, ever comprehend the station of a human being?

In his Revelation, a Prophet singled out a name for the Creator in the vernacular language of his era. In the English language the name of the Creator is called God and is emphasised with a capital G to underscore its singleness. Further God is referred to as He, Him and Himself. There is no capital letter in the Arabic language and thus the declaration there is no allah but allah and when rendered in English, there is no god but God, emphasising on the oneness and aloneness of the Creator.

All the Manifestations of God laud and speak of this identical Entity. Through Them we are guided to know, love and worship Him. We are taught to develop these spiritual attributes and qualities potentially in each of us. A human being is regarded as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value.

Our very existence on earth is due to the grace of God. We members of one race, the human race, belong to Him. He is not exclusive to any one religious group. We are His servants or His children.

True religion engenders unity, love and harmony not only among its adherents and with believers of other faiths. It reveals to us a purpose of life. While there are differing doctrines, followers of every faith embark upon the same journey the spiritual path leading to the majestic presence of the one loving Father.

It is not just through religious rituals but rather through sacrificial love for the other thereby raising ones consciousness to a state where an individual sees in the other the face of God, regardless of colour or creed.

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What’s in a Name?

Though a death certificate has been issued for Jahi McMath, many of the 13-year-old Oakland girls classmates still believe the quiet leader who laughed at jokes that weren't funny will one day return to school if they just pray hard enough.

The school told us that shes not officially dead yet, said Dymond Allen, one of Jahi's friends at EC Reems Academy of Technology and Arts in East Oakland. And we should keep her in our prayers. I still hope. And God has the last say-so.

The academy's chief operating officer Lisa Blair said she has tried to honor Jahi's family's wishes by telling students that their classmate may still be alive, even though doctors say she is legally and clinically dead.

The students responded with an outpouring of faith.

Most kids are Christian here, Blair said, and they believe that if you continue praying, theres always a possibility. The students understand the debate. Theyre just choosing spirituality over science.

Blair visited Children's Hospital Oakland on Jan. 5, just after Jahi's family won a court battle to keep the girl on life support and transfer her elsewhere. Blair said she "saw something on that visit that made her believe Jahi, a quiet student who was recently elected to be a judge on student council, was not truly dead.

On Thursday, about 250 of Blair's students donned purple T-shirts emblazoned with the words #TeamJahi and Keep Calm, Pray On.

Parents were given the opportunity to have their child "opt out" of the event, but the vast majority did not, because most of them know her, Blair added.

Jahi has been part of the school's extended family for more than a decade. Jahis older sister, Jabria Milsap, now 20, graduated in 2009 as valedictorian. Her brother, Jose Llamas, is now in fourth grade at the school. Jahi's younger sister, Jordyn Johnson, is in kindergarten.

MORE: Catholic Group Says Jahi McMath "With Jesus Christ"

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Friends say they believe brain-dead girl is alive

Feature Article of Saturday, 11 January 2014

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

To a certain extent, in the first installment of this series, we touched on various subjects, including such sensitive ideas as skin bleaching, cultural amnesia, politics of language in preserving cultural memory, internalization of inferiority complex, cultural appropriation, and, more generally, sociology of knowledge. Principally, though, we broached some of these topics in the generalized context of white standards of beauty, in other words, as part of the social framework of cultural critique that has become normative aesthetics in the African world. What is more, anorexia and bulimia are two other key Western cultural imports, invisible and invisible, which are greatly impacting, if negatively, the architectonics of female anatomy. We do also know how modernized diet narrows the hips of growing females and makes childbirth an obstetric nightmare.

Why should a public figure, Apostle Kojo Safo, founding evangelist-entrepreneur of Kristo Asafo (Christ Reformed Church), come across as Michael Jackson, 50 Cents, and Rev. Al Sharpton, in one complete package, bearing the conked hair of Al Sharpton, the blanched skin of Michael Jackson, and the chains of 50 Cents? What are our music and movie industries doing to reverse these stiflingly negative trends? What has become of the directorial and production adroitness of Spike Lee, Kwaw Ansah, Ousmane Sembene, Manthia Diawara, Haile Gerima, Molefi Kete Asante, Jr., and Safi Faye in the global African community? Anyway, lets briefly shift the focus of our discourse to another equally important matter: Mr. Barack Obamas epochal election to the executive office may not have signaled the advent of post-racial America yet, as Tim Wise forcefully argues in Colorblind and Between Barack and a Hard Place, nevertheless, the knowledge of Mr. Barack Obamas as part African, specifically, a Luo, alone, may eliminate, by all odds, his being considered a hopeful presidential material in Kenya.

Thats how far America has come after the emotionally-long journey of slavery and of the Doll Experiments, the latter to which we devoted some considerable analytic and explanatory space in the prequel. Therefore, in general, Kenya and Africa should learn from the American precedent, because our invoked exemplars on political equalitarianism and social justice, both of which we have explored elsewhere, directly work into the political economy of national development. That said, lets set our digression aside and quickly proceed to matters of topical relevancy as well as of contextual immediacy: What makes it so easy for the African-born child in America to reject his culture timorously while the American child accepts his or hers courageously? For instance, why does Michael Kofi Tenkorang refuse to answer to Kofi in the presence of his American friends, preferring to be called Michael instead? Otherwise, why does he dutifully answer to Kofi in his friends absence? Could cultural disorientation or shock be the explanation?

Barring any comprehensive response of a satisfactory nature, lets proceed to look at the questions another way: What has the biracial presidency of Mr. Obama, for instance, got to do with Afrocentric psychosocialization, health of African psychology, reinforcement or elevation of confidence in the African soul, or cultural conscientization of the youth? Actually, we invoke these examples to illustrate how a triangle of relationship, defined by three apical variables, the impressionable minds of children, of culture, and of ethnicity/race, thats, multiculturalism, should function within the analytic locale of theoretical constraints. This is not only a pragmatic recourse, but a developmentally-appropriate query, an essential fact, as well. So, now, failing inclusion of additional sociocultural variables, for reasons of analytic simplicity, we may necessarily have to agree, going by the standards of our earlier arguments, that unfamiliar cultural and linguistic conventions may induce a potentialization of investigational disinterest as far as a Childs growing curiosity of a certain subject, mathematics or science, say, is concerned.

Consequently, in the best interest of national and personal development, what do we do, as a nation, in terms of bettering the mind of the African child through Afrocentric pedagogization? Elsewhere, we have alluded to some social variables, namely political elitism, leadership crisis, intellectual inertia, and political incompetence (corruption), as four notable retrogressive spokes embedded in the wheel of national development. Again, in a way, we believe, as elsewhere, that these four constitutive parameters sever the umbilical fluidity shared between the head of society, leadership, and the moral conscience of society, the people. In other words, we are quick to dismiss the political economy of grassroots participation in the social equation of national development. It is no news that this kind of arrogance and of elitist intellectualism is typical of a segment of our intelligentsia. In fact, no nation has had lasting success with development without populist, if active, involution of its citizens.

Structural functionalism holds that every human being is important in the social matrix of national development. A criminal, for instance, has a positive role, direct or indirect, to play in society. That is to say, debriefing a criminal, say, may yield useful information for combating crime in society. Alternatively, a law-abiding citizen may serve as a positive model for the criminal in society. In fact, the theorizing of Ama Mazama, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Maulana Karenga, Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, and Molefi Kete Asante, to name but seven, on the affirmative allocation of grassroots conscientization in a labyrinth of national forwardism cannot replace political convenience and ethnic trivialities, granted that grassroots conscientization, a political exchange rate, is itself manifestly powereconomic, political, and socialand respect.

The activist politics of the Dalai Lama, Gabriel Prosser, Gustavo Gutierrez, Sojourner Truth, Cesar Chavez, Paul Bogle, Javier Sicilia, Harriet Tubman, Thich Nhat Hanh, Jeremiah Wright, Camilo Torres Restrepo, Dedan Kimathi, Toussaint LOuverture, Denmark Vessey, Walter Sisulu, Malcolm X, Nat Turner, and Julius Malema underscores our point. Obviously, these analytic trajectories should naturally lead us to the social relevance of Afrocentric theory in pedagogy. Lest we be misunderstood, Afrocentricity does not necessarily connote a rejection of the non-African world, as its ill-informed detractors are wont to imply. Fundamentally, it means centering or rooting African Personality in the fertile soil of African historical, spiritual, material, and cultural consciousness. This is not Senghorian Negritude, however. Afrocentricity is a theory firmly grounded in scientific objectivity. Among other useful observations, cultural critics note that contradictions in African societies are typical of non-African societies, too. Dambisa Moyos How the West Lost, Amartye Sens Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions, and Yasheng Huangs The China Growth Fantasy instantiates this view.

Moreover, Cornel West and Tavis Smiley have demonstrated how poverty constitutes a major problem for the American republic (See The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto). That aside, superstitious systems like witchcraft are not exclusively African, either. One of the most serious problems in the late-sixthteen-century country-side was the increase in witch-hunting, which was l
argely a phenomenon of the villages and small towns, not the citiesand most of the victims were from the lower classes, but most lower-class people were quick to cooperate with the judges and denounce others as witches, Prof. Frederic J. Baumgartner writes in France in the Sixteenth Century, p.269, adding: The extensive use of torture in witch trials intensified the witch craze by producing long lists of alleged accomplices, but there were other powerful elements as well. One was the bitter religious strife, in which each side denounced the other as doing the work of the devil.

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The Best Educational Formula(ll)

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) January 09, 2014

Bestselling author of The Four Agreements, and heart-centered teacher don Miguel Ruiz recently spoke with Women For One's Founder, Kelly McNelis Senegor, about defining truth, how to avoid suffering, and how to work towards a more joyous, simpler state of mind.

After realizing that the Toltec wisdom practiced by his family held all the tools that could change the human mind, don Miguel realized his calling - marrying this wisdom with a practical, and even scientific point of view. He is considered a National Heirloom of Mexico, and has received numerous recognitions, including a US Air Force challenge coin engraved with The Four Agreements.

In the interview, don Ruiz outlines his two versions of truth what we perceive as humans and the truth that just exists. He notes that humans have the ability to perceive the truth all the time, but many people dont acknowledge how they distort the truth to create their own personal story or account of what is real. The real truth, he says, is something that cant be explained by words; its an existence that is merely perceived.

Don Miguel explained how people use their perceptions to shape the truth, to describe who they are and what they believe, without seeing how societal or even personal systems of belief, cultural norms and upbringings shape what they know to be true. We understand only what we learn, notes don Miguel.

This idea of perception-based truth is one of the primary points in don Miguel's Toltec teachings. The Toltec philosophy is grounded in simplicity and common sense. Through his books and teachings, don Miguel Ruiz provides easily accessible lessons in simple, common-sense psychology, building a set of tools that anyone can use to heal themselves regardless of their situation. He reminds his students that life is focused on the person experiencing it though perceptions, beliefs, and awareness.

Through this knowledge, he teaches people to overcome their own obstacles to alleviate suffering. In the same way, these teachings can be applied on a more widespread scale. Becoming more aware of societally constructed truths, don Miguel's students have the ability to make change within their communities because they have the ability to challenge these so-called truths. This means that communities like Women For One have the power to make changes by shedding light on powerful community leaders, spiritual teachers, and amazing women from around the globe.

Women For One is a global community of women who are working to change communities for the better by promoting awareness, authenticity, and empowerment worldwide. Through the Women For One website, they share stories written by women around the world, interviews with authentic and inspiring people, life-changing books, and chances for community advocacy. To find out more or to watch the interview online, visit http://www.womenforone.com.

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Don Miguel Ruiz Interview with Women For One on Toltec Wisdom and His Book The Four Agreements

A belief in the literal Biblical version of creation may boil down, in part, to personality.

A new study suggests that people who believe in creationism are more likely to prefer to take in information via their senses versus via intuition. In contrast, religious believers who see the Bible's creation story as symbolic tend to be more intuitive.

"Intuitives tend to be much more at home with symbolic things, generally," said Andrew Village, the head of the theology and religious studies program at York St. John University in the United Kingdom.

Personality and religion

Village, an Anglican priest, is also a former scientist -- before he trained in the ministry, he studied the ecology of birds of prey. He applied that scientific sensibility in the new study, which surveyed 663 English churchgoers on their beliefs about Genesis, the book of the Bible that describes the Earth's creation. [The Top 10 Creation Stories]

The 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin in 2009 prompted great interest in beliefs about evolution and creationism, Village told LiveScience. Creationism is the belief that God created humans and animals in their current form, as described in Genesis. The most literal of these beliefs holds that God created the universe in six days.

Previous studies have suggested that personality influences whether people will become religious, and if they are religious, what tradition they will gravitate toward, Village said. He wanted to investigate how personality influenced beliefs about Genesis, specifically.

To do so, he included personality measurements in his survey, focusing on personality traits first proposed by psychologist Carl Jung in 1921 and made famous by the Myers-Briggs personality test. This test is meant to reveal people's preferences for collecting information and making decisions.

The Myers-Briggs breaks people into four dichotomies: extroversion versus introversion, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling and judging versus perception.

Extroverts prefer the company of others, whereas introverts like to be on their own. Those who fit into the "sensing" category like to gather information in concrete, tangible ways, whereas the intuitive rely on abstract feelings and hunches. "Thinkers" make decisions via logical, detached judgments, whereas "feelers" focus on empathy and consensus-building.

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Creationist beliefs linked to personality type in new survey of churchgoers