Archive for April, 2010

Jesus in China 2

The Bitter Cup abounds with compelling testimonies by missionaries of the younger generation. Their dedication, suffering, faithfulness, and thanksgiving have led to an unprecedented revival of the Chinese Christian church.

Duration : 1 hr 3 min 28 sec

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Final events of bible prophecies!

FINAL EVENTS!

Duration : 43 min 40 sec

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On My God Trailer

http://bit.ly/1SllQe – Watch On My God Full Movie Online

Duration : 2 min 25 sec

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Three Crosses In The Wilderness Part 1

This week I will be showing how the cross can be seen in the tabernacle of Moses.

Duration : 29 min 19 sec

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BIBLE COLLEGE course 43 TARES & WHEAT

Dr. Ward R. Williams Ph. D., University of Minnesota, is the Author of "The Life Of Christ" Course on Bible Student .com. … Dr. Williams has served as Registrar at Southern California Bible College, Vice President at Southeastern Bible College , Academic Dean at Evangel College and Trinity Bible College

Duration : 9 min 57 sec

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Resisting Church Changes

If there is anything the church is good at doing, as history has shown, it is at being conservative and resisting change even in light of contradicting it’s very own Scriptures. The contradiction is one primarily of wearing glasses that Jesus said one should not wear. So blame the leadership that keeps promoting “sameness”. Thus the church supported slavery and patriarchal policies long after even society in general saw them is wrong-headed. 

Valerie Hunt put it this way, “The real struggle we experience as we evolve comes from our resistance to change, not just to move forward, but to take a new, un-chartered route. Change at this level disrupts ways of thinking, making choices and behaving.” I know all too well. My ways of thinking have been greatly disrupted.

Jesus, Buddha, Francis Of Assisi, Gandhi, and St. Theresa, to name a few, drastically rearranged their egos, group affiliation, and values. Many Christians don’t want to hear that, but just read the Gospels and see how the Pharisees, Sadducees, and others did not like the “new values” that Jesus was attaching to Judaiism.

Thus they had him crucified!

Jesus died to his ego (he gave up in the garden), he changed the habit patterns of when a person could be healed, and he shook off the bland beliefs of the time-honored rituals, even trashing the sacrificial system wherein one sins could be covered by killing an animal, instead saying a “dip in the water” would suffice for “repentance of sins”. Jesus was a RADICAL, SUBVERSIVE teacher!

Where are those teachers today?

Instead, we are suffused with stiff-necked fundamentalists who only want the interpretations of the Bible that Constantine wanted 1,700 years ago in Nicea. Even a “what-if” question throws one into the category of heretics. The institutionalized church, mainly in the format of denominational turf-wars, has adopted agreements within and among itself and built walls to keep out any ideas to the contrary.

Such an opposite paradigm of Jesus, who became the Christos, that didn’t resist change, but BROUGHT IT to the TABLE. How can we as His followers do any less- regardless of the cost. And, it will cost. Change always brings regression (a mild word) at first. What changes in your life, your view of Jesus, the Bible, the universe are you resisting- even fighting?

It’s a scary question to ask and honestly answer. But, when and when you can’t answer it, I bet your friends can! 

Ernie Fitzpatrick
http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/resisting-church-changes-738502.html

Worship and Church Attendance

The church exists in the city because it has certain specific functions to perform. To maintain public worship, to persuade to definite convictions and inspire to noble conduct, to furnish religious education, and to promote social reform are its essential responsibilities. Worship is a natural attitude to the individual who is prompted by a desire to adjust himself to the universe and to obtain the peace of mind that follows upon the establishment of a right relationship.

To most people it is easier to get into the proper atmosphere and spirit of worship in a public assembly, and they therefore are accustomed to meet at stated intervals and bow side by side as if in kinship together before the Unseen God. Long-established habit and a superstitious fear of the consequences that may follow neglect keep some persons regular in church attendance when they have no sense of spiritual satisfaction in worship. Others go to church because of the social opportunities that are present in any public gathering.

In recent years church attendance has not kept pace with the increasing population of the city. A certain pride of intellect and a feeling of security in the growing power of man over nature has produced an indifference to religion and religious teachers. Multiplicity of other interests overshadows the ecclesiastical interests of the aristocracy; fatigue and hostility to an institution that they think caters to the rich keeps the proletariat at home.

In the city, as in the country, the religious instinct expresses itself socially through the institution of the church . Spiritual force cannot be confined within the limits of a single institution; religion is a dynamic that permeates the life of society; yet in this age of specialization, and especially in a country like the Nigeria, where religion is a voluntary affair, not to be entangled with the school or the State, religion has naturally exerted its influence most directly through the church. Charity and settlement workers are inspired by a religion that makes humanitarianism a part of its creed, and a large majority of them are church members, but as a rule they do not attempt to introduce any religious forms or exercises into their programmes. Most public-school teachers have their religious connections and recognize the important place of religion in moulding character, but religious teaching is not included in the curriculum because of the recognized principle of complete religious liberty and the separation of church and state.

The result has been that religion is not consciously felt as a vital force among many people who are not directly connected with an ecclesiastical institution. Those who are definitely connected with the church in Nigeria contribute voluntarily to its expenses, sometimes even at personal sacrifice. Most people who have little religious interest realize the value of the mere presence of a meeting-house in the community as a reminder of moral obligations and an insurance against disorder. Its spire seems to point the way to heaven, and to make a mute appeal to the best motives and the highest ideals. The decline of the church is, therefore, regarded as a sign of social degeneracy.

Victor Ezeaku
http://www.articlesbase.com/psychology-articles/worship-and-church-attendance-681541.html

Who Is My Brother?

It’s been a few months now since I started my ‘Christians and Moslems can be friends’ campaign and the results thus far have been… well… surprising.

Some of the surprises have been very pleasant. I’ve made new friends – most of them warm-hearted Moslems from Turkey and elsewhere, along with some enthusiastic Aussies who are keen to stand with me in battling prejudice against Moslems and Arabic people in general.

The nasty surprises have been the flames I’ve received (that’s NET-talk for vicious and caustic emails). I’ve been called every name under the sun and told repeatedly that I’m not a real Christian and don’t know my Bible. I’ve even received some threats!

The biggest surprise though has come from some well-meaning and mature Christian friends, who are largely supportive of the campaign, but think that I went too far in one of my addresses when I referred to the Islamic members of the gathering as ‘my Islamic brothers and sisters’.

The first time someone drew my attention to this I thought nothing of it. But when two and then three people – all of whom I respect – independently made exactly the same point I thought I’d better re-examine what I had said.

What was put to me was as follows: that while we all want to be friends with all sorts of people, regardless of race or creed, the terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ reflect a level of kinship that is not appropriate between persons of totally different faiths.

The paradigm appealed to was the Bible itself. In the New Testament the words ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ are used quite specifically to refer to other members of the Christian community. The terms are not used indiscriminately, and we likewise should be guarded in our use of them.

It was suggested to me that I substitute the term ‘friend’ or ‘neighbour’ when speaking of Islamic persons and reserve the more familiar terms for my fellow Christians.

These challenges have concerned me, and have forced me to re-examine the Biblical material. They also got me thinking about what lay behind these challenges. Why were some of my Christian brethren so determined to exclude Islamic people from the family, so to speak?

Now, before anybody accuses me of being a raving liberal, let me acknowledge up front that the Bible does indeed recognise a significant distinction between those who are inside the community of faith and those who are outside – between us and them.

This doesn’t sit well with the modern ethos, where all religions are considered to be variations on the same theme, and where differences are minimized and often trivialised for the sake of harmony, but this is not the mindset of the Scriptures.

Further, my critics were quite right in pointing out that the terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ are generally reserved for persons who are on the inside of the faith community. What they overlooked though, I think, was the way in which the Lord Jesus Himself continually blurred the border between those on the inside and those on the outside – between us and them.

Even a cursory reading of the New Testament will show us that most of Jesus’ contemporaries had a very straightforward understanding of who was part of the family of faith and who was not. Your brothers and sisters were your fellow Jews, and all non-Jews were outsiders.

Jesus’ clerical contemporaries (the Scribes and the Pharisees) had a still narrower understanding. They only included Jews who lived pious lives in accordance with the commandments of the Torah as members of the household of faith. Those Jews who collaborated with the Roman occupying forces and other notorious sinners joined the great unwashed as being excluded from membership of the faith community.

In both cases Jesus repeatedly and deliberately blurred the borders between saved and unsaved, between insiders and outsiders. He openly fraternized with the great unwashed within Israel, and he regularly moved beyond ethnic and religious boundaries – communicating with Romans, Greeks, and even a Samaritan woman!

It was for this reason that Jesus was so often despised by the authorities – because he refused to accept the clear lines of demarcation between us and them. And when challenged to recognise His own family, Jesus made a very telling response:

“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50)

This is a significant quote, as here Jesus defines membership of the household of faith dynamically. It is obedience to God that makes someone part of the family – not their synagogue membership nor their ethnicity.

This is consistent with Jesus’ behaviour throughout the New Testament. He shows striking disregard for the traditional distinctions between insiders and outsiders, and the early church followed in His footsteps by joyfully abandoning any spiritual distinctions made on the basis of race and ethnicity.

Two of Jesus’ parables also come to mind:

One is the parable of the weeds in the field in Matthew 13, where Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a field of wheat that is somewhat overgrown with weeds. The servants of the farmer ask him whether they might not go and rip out the weeds, but the farmer stops them, saying, “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them”.

The problem is that the servants can’t tell the difference between good and bad. Membership of the right church is clearly not sufficient as a mark of authenticity. Only the master can tell the wheat from the chaff.

The other parable that comes to mind, ironically, is the parable of the Good Samaritan, found in Luke Chapter 10.

There we see one of the clergy testing Jesus concerning the commands of God. Jesus tells the questioner to love God and to love his neighbour but the man is not satisfied. He asks, “but who is my neighbour?”

Those who were listening that day knew the answer to the man’s question. Your neighbour is your fellow Jew – a fellow member of the people of God. So Jesus tells a story about a good Samaritan – a man of a different race and faith altogether!

I said that there was something ironic about the appropriateness of this parable, and it is the fact that one of my critics had suggested to me substituting the word ‘neighbour’ for ‘brother’ when referring to my Islamic friends. The irony is that the two terms would have been used interchangeably in New Testament times. Both brother and neighbour were labels you applied to your fellow Jews only. Jesus though refused to play along, but instead redefined the word for us.

I’m sure that there’s plenty more that could be said on this subject. Let me make only one point today – that any attempt to make a tangible distinction between the wheat and the weeds, between those on the inside and those on the outside, between those who are our brothers and sisters under God and those who are not, is surely contrary to the Spirit of the New Testament.

Christ reserves for Himself the role of separating the nations into sheep and goats. It is not our role. So does this mean that all Islamic people are my brothers and sisters, in terms of the language of the New Testament? The answer is simple:

Whoever does the will of our Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

Dave Smith
http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/who-is-my-brother-99200.html

Evolution/religion: an Integrative View of Nature, Faith and the Human Mind

Evolution/Religion

An Integrative Look at Nature, Faith and the Human Mind

By Robert DePaolo

Freud once described history as a series of race wars, implying that bigotry is and always has been tantamount to a non-malleable virus infecting all of human society

It is a debatable point. Detractors might say mankind can and typically has learned his way out of racial bias as a result of exposure to, interaction with, and dependence on people of other races. For example in recent times the population of blacks and other racial minorities has increased in western nations, providing support in war and industry and enhancing the national spirit in the arts, athletics and literature.

On the other hand, adherents might contend that built into the human genetic code is an equally non-malleable tendency to protect and preserve the local gene pool, and that stranger-hostility is quite characteristic of all primate groups – including homo sapiens.

Some studies seem to support that view, in particular the work of Wilson & Wrangham, (2003). Their results coincide with a main tenet of evolutionary psychology that primitive behaviors devoted to gene pool preservation will take priority over the egalitarian philosophy framing the rules of social interaction in most democratic societies.

In terms of human experience, “strangeness” does not have to be based on race. It can be based on language differences, ethnic background, gender and any number of real and superficial distinctions. It’s just that the physical differences among races makes the process of discriminating between “us” and “them” rather perceptually and emotionally convenient.

Even with distinctive racial traits, “stranger bias” is hardly inevitable. It seems to be merely one of two options provided by the human brain. As Perry, (2008) and Cromwell & Schultz (2003) have suggested, the sheer size of the brain, particularly in the vast regions of the cerebral cortex (a section less influenced by primal urges and more concerned with learning and integrating new associations and concepts) provides a check and balance on our most basal instincts. Indeed Freud’s theory regarding the separation of the ego from the id for impulse control might have its physiological correlate in the frontal cortex.

In that context perhaps, despite Freud, it is not race, but the human capacity to over-distinguish between objects and persons that comprises the true sociopolitical virus. In truth that process, often referred to as discrimination learning, is more of a two sided coin than a virus because when it comes to drawing distinctions, that component of mind can employed for better or for worse; for example to chart the course of history, politics and scientific discovery, leading either to progress or social devolution.

That all good and bad, productive and destructive elements in society emanate from the human mind is a tautology requiring no further elaboration. On the other hand the way in which the human mind works does invite scrutiny, because the mind/brain is a flexible structure by virtue of its genetic and functional make-up, which can lead to any number of behavioral and attitudinal possibilities. In fact, as Mercado (2008) has suggested, the human brain appears to be a kind of bimodal organ constantly shifting between discriminatory and integrative cognitive processes.

Since human brain evolution occurred in the context of an arboreal lifestyle requiring integrative perception, a capacity for figure-ground (stereoscopic) visual distinctions and internal memory to correct for visual and acoustical vagaries in the trees, it tends to bring ideas together into common focus. In that sense the primate brain template provided us with a penchant for integrative thought. On the other hand the latest primate brain revision providing new circuits to facilitate upright walking seems to have led to a bifurcated human mind, featuring a left-right motor cadence requiring separate inhibition-excitation sequences. This process was converted to other functions and led to an enhancement of discrimination and attention capacities. While all creatures can learn to distinguish between stimuli, the finely tuned alternating/competing capacities to separate and integrate experiences appears to play a significant role in th development of both the personality and human culture.

One can see the bimodal mind in action in virtually all human endeavors. For example the ability to put circuit A on hold while circuit B is activated enables the Eskimo not only to walk upright but to describe 12 different kinds of snow. Meanwhile the fact that humans can weave experiences together enables the rest of us to understand that snow consists of one chemically configuration and is simply water at a different state of temperature.

Thus we seem to shift back and forth between convergence and divergence in our actions, thoughts, beliefs and prayers and perhaps the course of human history is partly determined by which of those two trends is emphasized and championed by society at any given time.

It clearly has played a role in American politics. For example the evolution of the political parties has been part real and part illusory – the need for group distinctions often overriding the practicalities of “the party philosophy.” Despite its origin in Jefferson’s democratic-republican party, which favored agriculture over industry and (as evidenced in Jefferson’s letters on moral principles) held to the possibility that agnosticism and morality were not mutually exclusive, the current Republican party has adopted a fairly vigorous religious mindset and champions the cause of industry. Meanwhile Democrats…Dixiecrats, who in earlier times became a collective albatross around the neck of voting rights now claim to be the only party truly sensitive to the plight of minorities. The fact that the members of both parties compete fervently during elections based on ostensibly clear choices in policy and legacy seems to indicate that discriminatory thought for its own sake has prevailed in recent times.

If unnecessary group distinctions have proved to be a mild impediment to the evolution of American society (as accurately predicted by James Madison and Voltaire) such artificial distinctions have been insidious among the so-called major religions.

Depending one what mind-mode is in play, one could assert either that there are no meaningful distinctions among the beliefs of Jews, Christians and Moslems – making several thousand years of hostility seem unnecessary, not to mention foolish, or that the contrasts are so substantial that disputes over territory and doctrine would have been unavoidable in any case.

The integrative part of mind might angle in on the fact that the three faiths have virtually identical moral premises. For example in reading the Bible and the Qur’an one could conclude that the Ten Commandments are a staple of all three religions. While the Christian and Jewish interpretations involve slightly different wording, all ten laws are morally and functionally identical in both instances. For example the first item in both interpretations refers to placing “No Other God Before Me.” Interestingly both the Christian and Judaic versions, derived from Exodus and Deuteronomy, allude to the fact that loyalty is God’s due for having “brought the people out of the land of Egypt.” The individuals involved in that episode; Moses, Aaron et al. were of course thoroughly Hebrew, and despite their resentment-fueled drift toward pagan worship in the desert, they had no real interest in modifying the Jewish faith, as had Jesus.

Yet over time a common belief system and way of life gave way to the distinction-seeking circuits, leading to persecution of Jews who despite having different rituals, held essentially the same beliefs as the Christians who persecuted them.

The one salient distinction between Judaism and Christianity was of course Jesus’ claim to be God (if indeed that was his claim) which most Jews during the Common Era would have considered blasphemous. Yet even that distinction is somewhat dubious, since Jesus often alluded to prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah as being in effect, his role models. He pointed out that they too had ascended into heaven, were reborn, and transcended the usual limits of mortality. During the Common Era most Jews held similar views of the higher prophets – and certainly of David.

Even more interesting, in light of the mind’s propensity for integrating and discriminating, are the similarities between Islam and the Judeo-Christian ethic. It is commonly known that the Islamic prophets are, by and large, the same men and women worshipped by Jews and Christians. For example Moslems adhere to the words and deeds of Abraham – whom they call “Ibrahim.” They consider Jesus, whom they call “Eisa al-Masseh” a prophet. They honor the legacies of Moses, whom they call “Musa,” Noah, whom they call “Nuh”, and Isaac, whom they call “Ishak,” and they seem to hold Mary, the mother of Jesus (Maryam in Arabic) in even higher regard than either Christians or Jews.

Despite no direct allusion to the Ten Commandments in the Qur’an Moslems also adhere to the Decalogue, albeit with a few minor revisions. For instance, in “Al-Israa” (The Night Journey) The Qur’an (47:19) states: “There is no other god beside God.” In 14:35 it says: “My Lord, make this a peaceful land and protect me and my children from worshipping idols.” There are also references to not taking the Lord’s name in vain, adhering to the Sabath (though on Friday), honoring one’s parents, abstaining from adultery, murder and theft and from coveting thy neighbor’s wife and bearing false witness.

One possible distinction between the Bible and the Qur’an might be seen in a slightly different wording of one of the commandments. While the Old Testament says: “thou shalt not kill” the Qur’an says in 17: 33: “Do not kill unjustly.”

Could this subtle difference justify the current nihilistic mindset of Islamic extremists intent for so long on exterminating Israelis and infidels in the west? It seems unlikely, especially since some Biblical scholars maintain that in the Old Testament a similar distinction between murdering and killing is implied as well – the argument being that Jews also believed it was occasionally necessary to kill for purposes of self defense and tribal preservation.

With that in mind perhaps history is less a function of time and place than of mind. The Crusades, the current conflict in the Middle East, the war on terror merely a series of plays in the theater of life, staged not by the actors, as Shakespeare maintained, but by a calcium, protein, myelin, water and information containing vessel known as the human brain, during times when the discriminatory aspect of mind took center stage.

A Thousand Years Later…

While the conflict among Christians, Jews and Moslems has continued in modern times we also have an increasingly contentious dispute between proponents of evolution and people of faith. Once again, the question could be asked as to whether this is a real or anthropocentric distinction, and whether, as with The Old and New Testaments and the Qur’an, the similarities outweigh the differences.

I would like to suggest such a possibility, and do so by drawing comparisons between the Decalogue, Al-Israa and the theory of natural selection.

One integrative idea is that the biological mandate revolving around the survival of both the individual and the group, seems to be in agreement with the laws inherent in these religious texts. In order to understand how merely requires a narrowing down and re-categorizating of the commandments into two main bio-moral laws. One espousing altruistic (social, survival enhancing) behaviors or restraints, the other devoted to creating a hierarchical, regulatory structure by which these behaviors and restraints can be prompted and governed over the course of time.

To elaborate; group survival, and by inference, protection of the local gene pool, require cohesion among members. The same cooperative behaviors observed in a pack of lionesses and wolves that enhance survival are also beneficial to human beings. With laws prohibiting theft, murder, adultery and coveting, interpersonal conflict is ameliorated, thus enhancing group cohesion. That dynamic leads to a stronger esprit de corps among members, giving impetus to behaviors that provide for the strong and give shelter to the weak, especially with regard to the protection and care off offspring.

In a bio-moral sense, the Bible and Qur’an are ingenious texts, particularly with respect to one characteristic that typifies all primate groups – the alpha male/female phenomenon. While dominance is often viewed as a bad thing – particularly by those living in a democratic society, it actually works in the primate world. Dominant males protect the members of the group and maintain order by issuing unilateral decisions which are the final word on conflict resolution. The reason this works is based on information dynamics. If all members of a group had equal status and conflict arose, say over territory, there would be no foundation by which to alleviate the conflict other than by mutual destruction. Genetically speaking, that would be an unfortunate trend. Since each member would presume to have equal claim to the territory the only possible endpoint would be a bloody victory by one party over another.

Interestingly, the way this might play out is by one member lining up more supporters than his rivals, thus giving him a numbers advantage in the course of battle. At the point where he emerged victorious, the fact that he had many followers would make him by

definition, a leader – thus setting up a hierarchy in any event. Consequently, in the primate world and perhaps in the mammalian world per se, hierarchies not only work but are perhaps an inevitable by product of socio-mathematics

The problem with humans is that while we also tend toward hierarchies (witness our worship of movie stars, athletes and musicians) we also have a more egalitarian outlook that is perhaps itself a byproduct of human evolution. It results from the fact that our large brains can conjure up so many tools, inventions, artistic configurations and ideas that no single alpha male or female can be sufficient. Thus our species seems to require many alphas.

That creates a potential moral dilemma. Specifically, if power is compartmentalized so that certain individuals protect us from certain hazards but not others – for example a police officer vs. a heart surgeon – there is no overriding arbiter to protect us from broader existential problems or problems that no single person can solve. Beyond that, the powerful can themselves conflict, such that a Brutus can assassinate a Caesar. In such circumstances who then has absolute, overriding authority? Who can decide on matters of conflict and prescribe behaviors and values for all, amidst this broad dispersion of power? Even if abstract laws become the objective solution, there would have to be someone to create and enforce those laws. In other words the combination of inevitable social conflict and the survival-based need for social equanimity in complex human society would perhaps invariably require a transcendent “referee.”

Thus carried to its logical endpoint, the evolution of the human brain from a hierarchy-based and less egalitarian primate brain would inexorably lead to a belief in and need for God.

At face value this conclusion might upset both religious adherents and atheists: the former because it takes God from the spiritual to the bio-natural domain, the latter because it suggests we will never reach a point in our social evolution where we can abandon a belief in some type of God.

Actually neither group need fret over this set of possibilities. First, because it is impossible to know whether natural selection runs contrary to God’s plan or whether perhaps God, in his wisdom has simply given us laws that coincide with the nature He also created which happen to favor survival of the only species capable of religious thought. To suggest there is an inherent incongruence between the idea of a God and the theory of natural selection would be to suggest that God wants us to act in ways that don’t coincide with a world He himself created.

As for the atheists, perhaps nature is all there is. Yet even if that were true, nature would require a lawful foundation, a grounding point by which matter and energy could have formed within the hot, formless plasma known as the cosmic egg. In other words whether or not one believes in a creator, it is difficult to conceive of a universe that began or transitioned from the size of a pin to its current expanse not undergoing some sort of creation process. Even if God doesn’t exist in quite human form, a tenet to which many religions (including arguably Christianity – which views God as a triad consisting of at least two ethereal beings) have always adhered. Does that mean that some overriding regulatory, creative alpha-component (say for example a superstring or particle constant that one day might be called the “El” particle) doesn’t exist and cannot work its wonders by transcending the rest of nature? I suppose it would depend on which part of our brain was in play at any given point in time.

REFERENCES

Cromwell, & Schultz (2003) Effects of Expectations for Differential Reward Magnitude

on Neuronal Activity in Primate Striatum. Journal of Neurophysiology 89: 2823-2838

Freud, S. (1960) The Einstein-Freud Correspondence; From; Einstein on Peace O.H Nathan & H, Norden (ed) New York; Schocken Books 186-203.

Jefferson’s Religious Beliefs, Research and Collections, Montecello Research Dept. Aug 2007

Mercado, E (2008) Neural and Cognitive Plasticity: From Maps to Minds. Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 134, No. 1 109-137.

Perry, B. (2008) Aggression and Violence: The Neurology of Experience. Scholastic.com 1-2.

Qur’an: 47:19

Qur’an: 14:35

Qur’an: 17:33

Wilson, M. & R. Wrangham. (2003) Inter-group Relations in Chimpanzees. American Review of Anthropology 32: 363-392

Robert DePaolo
http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/evolutionreligion-an-integrative-view-of-nature-faith-and-the-human-mind-699073.html

GRE Test Preparation Tips you should not miss

When you are going to take graduate record examination , GRE for the first time there is lot of excitement and fear of test  and score.  It is very important test and to help you understand  about the paper here are some of the tips you will find very useful .

How much time to study for GRE ?
If possible give yourself around two to three month with a few hours ( 1-4 ) of study every day . The less months or weeks you have more hrs per days will be needed . 

Practice for the test well :
– Take the Powerprep-I test – GRE POWERPREP is a software provided by ETS for the preparation of ETS-GRE. This software can be downloaded from the ETS official website for free.
-For Vocabulary and verbal – Barron’s books are very helpful and mostly recommended , try to memorize memorized Barron’s Basic Word List.
-For math test you can buy Nova’s GRE Math Bible For Quant BUT you have to make sure you understand everything in the book, it is very detailed and has more than enough practices of all levels to grill you on.
-For reading comprehension try to read newspaper and other informative articles online as it will give you some reading practice from computer monitor and enrich your reading comprehension .

Focus on concepts more in Math
off late GRE has been stressing more on basic math concepts rather than calculations so it is important that your concepts on number theory, statistics , Standard deviation , Mean, Mode , Quadratic equations Series , Number theories , Probability ,Speed and work problems ratios, inequalities, etc. etc. are very much clear with no room for confusion.

Some tips while you are taking the test :
First an foremost is – use common sense , if some question looks very simple and answer very obvious then stop for while and think again as these kind of questions are framed to lead you towards obvious answer not the correct answer. A clue to a wrong answer is the unrealistic answer, if you are calculating distance between earth and moon and it comes as 500 miles than it may be wrong. A very common reason for wrong answers is trying to imagine everything and not using paper for drawing and calculating .

William H.
http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/gre-test-preparation-tips-you-should-not-miss-1113129.html