Integrating Missionally

From the Pat Robertson Haiti debacle, Jeffrey Weiss has a story entitled “Haiti and the Pat Robertson Paradox” Great thoughts on religion in America (HT: Len Sweet)

From the election on Tuesday

Massachusetts Voters Backed Brown to Show Opposition to Democratic Agenda, Poll Says

“Nearly two-thirds of those who voted for Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race said their vote was at least in part to make clear their opposition to the Democratic agenda in Washington.”

Now What? Democrats Struggle to Make Sense of Losses

Between Republican Scott Brown’s surprise Senate victory over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts Tuesday night, the Supreme Court’s decision to lift campaign restrictions on corporations Thursday, Obama’s Transportation Security Administration nominee stepping down, Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke’s nomination coming under fire, and even progressive radio station Air America going off the air, Obama had just come through the most bruising five days his administration, his party, and his progressive base had ever seen together.

From Science this week

Neurons Developed from Stem Cells Successfully Wired With Other Brain Regions in Animals. Why does this matter?

In this study, a team of neuroscientists led by James Weimann, PhD, of Stanford Medical School focused on cells that transmit information from the brain’s cortex, some of which are responsible for muscle control. It is these neurons that are lost or damaged in spinal cord injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). “These stem cell-derived neurons can grow nerve fibers between the brain’s cerebral cortex and the spinal cord, so this study confirms the use of stem cells for therapeutic goals,” Weimann said.

Human Brain Uses a Grid to Represent Space. Why read this? Well, these cells correlate with Alzheimer’s. Fascinating read.

The parts of the brain which show signs of grid cells — the hippocampal formation and associated brain areas — are already known to help us navigate our environment and are also critical for autobiographical memory. This means that grid cells may help us to find our way to the right memory as well as finding our way through our environment. These brain areas are also amongst the first to be affected by Alzheimer’s disease which may explain why getting lost is one of the most common early symptoms of this disease.

From Health, Wellness, & Food

Unraveled? Here’s How to Knit Yourself and the World Together. Okay, get past the Buddhist quote and you’ll find some great thoughts:

Have you ever looked into the mirror and wondered who is staring back at you? Or longed to unite the many parts within you? The friendly one, the angry one, the resentful one, the sad one, the calm one, the impatient one, the confused one – that are all jumbled up behind a public persona that’s buffed and glossed – but tends to crack when you’re angry or upset.

27 Fitness and Fat Loss Tips. “These 27 Fitness and Fat Loss Tips will get you on the right track for this New Year”

How To Reach Your Goals By Keeping A Journal. Great suggestions for record-keeping!

Cook Pizza in a Cast-Iron Skillet. A great suggestion.

Think you need a pizza stone to make some great homemade pizza? Megan from DIY home weblog Not Martha suggests trying your trusty cast-iron skillet before shelling out for a uni-tasking pizza stone.

Popularity: 4% [?]

“It seems that when Christianity is popular, Christians are content with the idea of a firewall separating Church and State. It’s only when Christianity begins to lose it’s influence over the population at large that Christians begin to campaign for the State to adopt a Christian character.” That is the opening statement from Razib Khan’s December 22 article entitled “Less Religion = More Religious Activism” from his blog Gene Expression.

Data from a research team from Erasmus University in the Netherlands shows some interesting results. Looking at survey data from 18 Western countries, they found:

1. The fewer Christians in a country, the greater the support among Christians for a greater public role for religion.
2. The polarization of views between Christians and non-religious on a public role for religion is greatest in countries where there are fewest Christians.

The reasoning behind this increased activism are at least two fold. Some of this can be attributed to specific factors in Europe relating to religious pluralism. Even if a society is very secular, if the dominant religious orientation is uniform, then its background assumptions spreads through one’s daily life. One can therefore be a “cultural” Catholic or Lutheran, with an attachment to the exoteric forms associated with the religion, without being a believer. But when you have religious pluralism people are going to disagree strenuously about exoteric forms. This applies even to the post-religious; an American atheist from a Jewish background may have a different attitude toward Christmas than an American atheist from a Catholic background. In other words, as European societies have become less Christian over the past generation, they’ve also had to face more religious pluralism. Christians will become more assertive and aggressive in direct response to Europe’s growing Muslim community, which wishes to contest the tacit monopoly that Christianity has long had in Europe as the Faith.

Another issue which might be at work is that as nominal or marginal believers fall away, the set of individuals who remain committed Christians are more religious and exhibit more fidelity to their identity than before. This may result in a group of Christians who are much more cohesive and can engage in collective action out of proportion to their numbers. Whereas before more marginal and nominal members of the community might have served as a check on excessive activism, today those individuals may no longer be part of the Christianity community.

The power of an organized Christian community is clear in a society such as South Korea. Though only around 30% of the population is Christian, with almost half the population not having a religious affiliation at all, Christians have been over-represented in positions of power. The growth of the Christian religion has been rapid, but has slowed over the past 15 years. It seems possible that it may be nearing its “natural limit.” But that does not mean that it won’t be influential in the years to come.

So what do you think of the study and its conclusions? If the results of this study are true, as Westerners, do get more aggressive because we feel we are fighting back against the enemy (Satan)? Or are we just defensive, fearful of loosing our place?

Study Source:
Achterberg, P., Houtman, D., Aupers, S., Koster, W., Mascini, P., & Waal, J. (2009). A Christian Cancellation of the Secularist Truce? Waning Christian Religiosity and Waxing Religious Deprivatization in the West Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 48 (4), 687-701

Popularity: 3% [?]

Sensing the motives and feelings of others is a natural talent for humans. But how do we do it? Here, Rebecca Saxe shares fascinating lab work that uncovers how the brain thinks about other peoples’ thoughts — and judges their actions.

Rebecca Saxe studies how we think about other people’s thoughts. At the Saxelab at MIT, she uses fMRI to identify what happens in our brains when we consider the motives, passions and beliefs of others.

Popularity: 12% [?]

About this talk

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.

About the speaker

With a trio of influential bestsellers, Dan Pink has changed the way companies view the modern workplace. In the pivotal A Whole New Mind, Pink identifies a sea change in the global workforce — the shift of an information-based corporate culture to a conceptual base, where creativity and big-picture design dominates the landscape.

His latest book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, is an evolutionary transformation of the familiar career guide. Replacing linear text with a manga-inspired comic, Pink outlines six career laws vastly differing from the ones you’ve been taught. Members of the Johnny Bunko online forum participated in an online contest to create the seventh law — “stay hungry.”

A contributing editor for Wired, Pink is working on a new book on the science and economics of motivation called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
for release in late 2009.

Popularity: 9% [?]

About the Talk
While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

About the Speaker
Clay Shirky’s consulting focuses on the rising usefulness of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, wireless networks, social software and open-source development. New technologies are enabling new kinds of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done in business, science, the arts and elsewhere, as an alternative to centralized and institutional structures, which he sees as self-limiting. In his writings and speeches he has argued that “a group is its own worst enemy.” His clients have included Nokia, the Library of Congress and the BBC. Shirky is an adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he teaches course named “Social Weather.”

Popularity: 7% [?]