Some philosophers claim that it is not possible for God, if God exists, to figure in the phenomenological content of experience. W.T. Stace was one such philosopher committed to this claim, but he offered nothing in the way of an argument for it. William Forgie, however, has argued that on the assumption of two putatively plausible theses about the phenomenology of experience, phenomenologicall...

In two studies, self-affirming the behavioral trait of kindness was examined as a method of regulating state disgust toward one's physical appearance. In Study 1, 56 participants (37 women, 19 men, Mage=33.16 years) completed either a questionnaire designed to self-affirm kindness or a control equivalent and rated their disgust, anger, sadness, and happiness toward their appearance and behavior...

The ideas of cruelty, kindness, and unnecessary suffering play prominent roles in the growing debate over our treatment of animals. An index of how pervasive these ideas are, is that a philosopher who does not rely on them, or not all of them, or who argues in ways that give other ideas a place of prominence, might none the less be viewed as resting his case against, say, vivisection or factory...

This article studies the function of the ‘fear of God’ idea in the book of Job. It is argued that, despite the difference in terminology, the ‘fear of God’ is equivalent to the ‘fear of the LORD’ concept of Proverbs. The location of the motif in the final form of the book of Job suggests that the ‘fear of God’ is not being proposed as the answer to Job’s dilemma. Rather, Job is one who maintain...

We examined the relationship between the character strength of kindness and subjective happiness (Study 1), and the effects of a counting kindnesses intervention on subjective happiness (Study 2). In Study 1, participants were 175 Japanese undergraduate students and in Study 2, participants were 119 Japanese women (71 in the intervention group and 48 in the control group). Results showed that: ...

During the several thousand years of Jewish history, much has been written about the nature of the Jewish concept of God. This brief section is a summary of some of the major themes. There are different definitions of the concept of "God." We do not all mean the same thing when we use the word God, even with a capital "G." While there are some similarities in the Jewish and Christian beliefs ab...

A. Cosmological proof of the Existence of God In the 3rd Meditation, Descartes attempts to prove that God (i) exists, (ii) is the cause of the essence of the meditator (i.e. the author of his nature as a thinking thing), and (iii) the cause of the meditator's existence (both as creator and conserver, i.e. the cause that keeps him in existence from one moment to the next). The proof that God exi...

This study tested the hypothesis that in the minds of adult religious adherents, acquired beliefs about the extraordinary characteristics of God coexist with, rather than replace, an initial representation of God formed by co-option of the evolved person concept. In three experiments, Christian religious adherents were asked to evaluate a series of statements for which core intuitions about per...

How to promote compassionate care within public services is a concern in several countries; specifically, some British healthcare scandals highlight poor care for service users who may readily be stigmatised as 'other'. The article therefore aims to understand better the relationship between stigma and compassion. As people bereaved by a drug- or alcohol-related death often experience stigma, t...