Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2019, Theology

Wilfrid Ward's understanding of divine revelation appeared in three phases. In the first, Ward confronted "agnosticism" and "positivism," which resulted in an exploration into the nature of mysticism in the saints, as well as an explanation of the saints as an authority for the church's reception of divine revelation. Ward's second phase took place at the height of the modernist controversies, in which he was embroiled in disputes of George Tyrrell concerning the nature of the deposit of faith and our explication of the deposit and whether the initial revelation can be considered semper eadem. Ward's third, and final, phase of his theology of divine revelation returns in part to his interest in the nature of "imagination" and "conscience" and their role in the reception of divine revelation. Many of the questions concerning divine revelation that Ward expounds upon are still with us today. This dissertation looks at the foundational questions of Ward's theology of revelation, which includes his understanding of the reception of divine revelation by Christian subjects as it manifests within the context of his three theological phases.

Committee: William Portier (Advisor) Subjects: Religion; Religious History; Theology

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2021, Theological Studies

The Vatican's condemnation of Fr. John Augustine Zahm's most famous work, Evolution and Dogma, in the autumn of 1898 has traditionally been the subject of great interest among religious scholars and historians. This thesis describes several coalescing factors that negatively affected the book's fate: the neo-Thomists' critical reaction to Zahm's use of Saints Augustine and Aquinas in defense of evolutionism; the author's Americanist connections; the release of the French translation of Walter Elliott's The Life of Father Hecker; and the Church's resistance to the advancements of liberalism in European society, especially after the French Revolution. However, this thesis also takes a step further and argues that Fr. Zahm's writing and teaching career did not cease after the condemnation of his book. His passion for imparting an intelligent faith to his Catholic readers and audiences did not cease; his expansion efforts at the University of Notre Dame as Provincial of the Congregation of Holy Cross and his later publications, such as the trilogy of South American travelogues and the apologetic work Woman in Science, are testaments to his enduring “teaching heart” -- his passion for pursuing knowledge and communicating new understandings to others. This thesis emphasizes the importance of acknowledging Fr. Zahm's life holistically, in broad strokes. His contribution to American Catholic history need not be limited to the intrigue surrounding Evolution and Dogma.

Committee: William Portier (Committee Chair); William Trollinger Jr. (Committee Member); Sandra Yocum (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Religion; Religious History; Science History; Theology

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2017, History

Ernst Haeckel was one of the nineteenth century's most famous and influential scientists, and science popularizers. According to one historian of biology, he was “the chief source of the world's knowledge of Darwinism” in his time. He was also one of the chief sources of the world's knowledge of what has come to be called, in our time, the “conflict thesis” in the history of science and religion. At the same time, he endeavored to set up his own Darwinian-romantic theology, the forgotten religion of monism, in the place of Christianity. This paper makes use of new information technologies to gather documents which have been largely inaccessible in the past, on account of the difficulty of finding and sorting them. It aims at a comprehensive discussion of Haeckel's influence in the United States at this time – with lay people, with clerical audiences, and with other scientists. I find that Haeckel's ideas met with a poor reception in the United States, because they faced a steep “cultural gradient,” as between the monarchical, romantic, and sharply anti-Catholic values prevalent in Haeckel's native Prussia, and the democratic, empirical, and mildly anti-Catholic values prevalent in the United States. In the “struggle for their existence,” Haeckel's evolutionary monism faced superior competition from evolutionary world-explanations which originated within an Anglo-American context, and which were, in consequence, better “adapted,” so to speak, to their “environment.”

Committee: Alan Rocke Dr. (Advisor); Kenneth Ledford Dr. (Committee Member); Miriam Levin Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: History

PHD, Kent State University, 2017, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

Scientific developments such as cloning and nuclear energy have generated many controversial issues pertain to many political, social, environmental, ethical and cultural values in different societies around the globe. These controversies delimited and encircled the potential of including and teaching some important aspects of science in schools and therefore caused less consideration to the influence of these issues on enhancing the scientific literacy of people in general. The purpose of this study was to investigate how Saudi science teachers in the city of Tabuk in Saudi Arabia view and teach SSI in Saudi Arabia. This study employed semi-structured interviews with Saudi science teachers. Methodologically, this study used a constructivist grounded theory as a method for analysis to generate in-depth descriptive data about Saudi science teachers' views and teaching strategies of socio-scientific issues. Some direct and indirect benefits pertain to teaching science, understanding the relationship between science, religion, and society and some other topics are discussed in this study.

Committee: Todd Hawley (Committee Chair) Subjects: Curricula; Science Education

Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2023, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

A large body of research has investigated the role of religious belief within terror management theory and the cognitive science of religion, with interesting results emerging for atheists as compared to religious individuals. While atheists explicitly disavow religion, implicit measurement techniques have revealed an intuitive belief in religious concepts, particularly following reminders of death (Jong et al., 2012). However, to date, no studies have directly observed the cognitive processes that underlie these effects. In response to this gap in the literature, the present study seeks to propose and test a model of the cognitive pathways utilized by religious and atheistic individuals as they manage existential concerns. Specifically, this model proposes that following mortality salience (MS), both religious and atheistic individuals experience intuitive religious belief due to evolutionary cognitive biases. These intuitions are then consciously shaped in accordance with explicitly endorsed ideologies, leading religious individuals to accept intuitive religious belief and atheistic individuals to override their intuitions with a more analytic orientation. As such, the present study hypothesized that MS (compared to pain) would lead to decreased need for cognition (NFC) in Christians but increased NFC in atheists. In a sample of 248 adults, an ANOVA indicated that Christians primed with MS reported lower NFC than those primed with pain, while the opposite effect emerged for atheists, providing compelling evidence for the proposed model. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Committee: Kenneth Vail III (Advisor); Kathleen Reardon (Committee Member); Michael Horvath (Committee Member); Eric Allard (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology; Religion; Social Psychology

Master of Arts in Psychology, Cleveland State University, 2020, College of Sciences and Health Professions

The present study draws upon terror management theory (TMT) and cognitive science of religion (CSR) to investigate how religious believers and atheists motivational and cognitive processes might interact to affect the expression of religious intuitions and beliefs. TMT suggests the motivation to manage mortality-related concerns can lead to religious concepts, and CSR suggests religious concepts are highly intuitive but that individuals can sometimes engage in deliberate/analytical thinking to override them. The present research therefore proposes two theoretical ideas: 1) among religious believers, mortality awareness should increase the intuitive appeal of religious concepts, as well as the acceptance of those intuitions as expressed religious belief; and 2) among atheists, mortality awareness should similarly increase the intuitive appeal of religious concepts, but not expressed religious faith because (despite recognizing them as intuitively appealing) atheists may wield their available self-regulatory resources (e.g., analytic thinking) to over-ride those intuitions and thus abstain from expressing religious belief. Christians and atheists were recruited and randomly assigned to either a mortality salience condition or pain salience condition; then, each participant was asked to rate the extent to which they found religious concepts intuitively appealing and the extent to which they accept and express those concepts as religious belief. A 2 (between-subjects: Christian vs. atheist) x 2 (between-subjects: MS vs. pain) x 4 (within-subjects: want supernatural agents, believe in supernatural agents, want afterlife, believe in an afterlife) mixed-model ANOVA found the data patterns were consistent with hypotheses; implications are discussed.

Committee: Kenneth Vail III (Committee Chair); Allard Eric (Committee Member); Horvath Michael (Committee Member); Naser Shereen (Committee Member) Subjects: Social Psychology

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2020, Political Science (Arts and Sciences)

The following reflects on the 2016 election victory of Donald Trump. Most mainstream media accounts and a number of qualitative, Americanist studies propose a working-class “resentment” narrative to explain Trump's popularity. In contrast, I suggest that political theology and understanding western notions of “sovereignty” are more important for making sense of Trump's popularity. In what follows, I first provide a theoretical critique of genealogies of sovereignty in order to claim that identifying and intervening in situations of suffering are acts endemic to western sovereignty. My theoretical account expands notions of political theology to encompass the affective and the corporeal in order to claim that masculinity and sovereignty are co-constitutive forces in western cultural history. Have illustrated this claim in our canonical sources of political theory, I then return to the theological context of political `theology' in order to locate the importance of suffering. Generally speaking, identifying situations of suffering, intervening within these situations, and causing situations of suffering are all sovereign acts. The popularity of Donald Trump and the unwavering support of his base comes not from a place of political ignorance or a need to irrationally resent others, but from the embodied notions of western politics that conceives of political order anchored on a masculine, sovereign individual who bears and distributes suffering

Committee: Julie White Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Judith Grant Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jonathan Agensky Ph.D. (Committee Member); Andrew Ross Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Ancient Civilizations; Biblical Studies; Classical Studies; European Studies; Gender Studies; Philosophy; Political Science; Religion; Religious History; Theology

BA, Oberlin College, 2020, Religion

This capstone engages the history qigong, a Chinese method of spiritual and bodily cultivation. Although similar Daoist practices have existed for thousands of years, the term qigong was invented by the Chinese military in the 1950s. Qigong exploded in popularity in China from the early 1980s to the late 90s. The Chinese state promoted, appropriated, regulated, and ultimately suppressed qigong. On one hand, the Chinese Communist Party wanted to measure and order qigong according to orthodox scientific and political principles, thus processing and controlling the explosion of spirituality known as “Qigong Fever.” Yet on the other hand, both within and outside the state, many people witnessed the miraculous power of qigong, came to believe in it deeply, and wanted its spiritual and religious elements to thrive. The interplay of these two approaches—to measure and control vs. to experience and believe—drove the state's interaction with qigong, fueling qigong's rise yet causing its fall. Ultimately, the religious elements of qigong operated on their own terms and proved impossible to control.

Committee: Cynthia R. Chapman (Advisor); Marc J. Blecher (Advisor); Andrew Macomber (Advisor) Subjects: Asian Studies; History; Political Science; Religion; Religious History

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2018, Sociology

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Committee: Rebecca Catto Dr (Committee Co-Chair); Juan Xi Dr (Committee Co-Chair); Matthew Lee Dr (Committee Member) Subjects: Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Comparative Studies

Humans are not alone in this world nor have we ever been. This inter-disciplinary project develops an approach to understanding species difference through a phenomenology-informed, material-semiotic investigation human/cattle co-emergence. Cattle (Bos taurus) have been selected because of their outsized significance in the transformations that have defined contemporary human life. By identifying a select set of sites and developing a situated investigation around a “beastly figure” representative of each of them, this project demonstrates the co-productive and emergent qualities of our interspecies relationships and makes a case for situated co-emergence as an ethical and ontological paradigm for animal studies. Over the course of the text, I will consider several “beastly figures” each of which offers an example of co-emergent human/cattle processes. I come to these figures through a process of “tracing,” starting with my own situated position and moving toward an encounter (albeit a mediated one) with the world-making frame of another being. The dissertation begins with a “0” chapter on the wild aurochs, an animal predating or excluded from the human/cattle domestication relationship. Each subsequent chapter takes up a different figure of human/cattle entanglement to highlight a passageway of encounter between species or identify an emergent whole that the integration of our species creates. Chapter 1 follows the alphabet back to its beastly source, provides an overview of the tracing methodology, and makes a case for the importance of cattle specifically. Chapter 2 considers the medieval bestiary as a material object, a medium for encountering an animal other, and as a model for understanding projects of knowing animals. The next three chapters consider contemporary entanglements between humans and cattle and the emergent potentials of each. All this builds toward a conclusion, which pulls together the threads of each chapter to emphasize the ethical importan (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Hugh Urban PhD (Advisor); David Horn PhD (Committee Member); Bernhard Malkmus PhD (Committee Member); Isaac Weiner PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Animals; Comparative; Cultural Anthropology; Ecology

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 0, Psychology

At some point in their lives, everyone will experience a stressful life event. Usually, someone can cope with and make meaning from the event. However, the body of research investigating the impact of severe and/or chronic exposure to stressful life events on the brain shows that harmful effects of stress exposure accumulate. Considering the extant literature regarding religious meaning making in light of these findings and the robust literature on spiritual transformation following stressful life events, I developed three hypotheses: 1) stressful life events increase risk of (non)religious ID change, 2) earlier events continued to impact later ID changes, and 3) risk of ID change was similar across change groups. This study analyzed a nationally representative longitudinal dataset of US children born between 1980 and 1984 (N = 8984). The final analyses used multiple imputation to account for missing data and did not find evidence supporting the hypotheses.

Committee: Julie Exline Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Heath Demaree Ph.D. (Committee Member); Arin Connell Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Health; Mental Health; Psychology; Religion; Spirituality

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1980, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1959, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Psychology

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2010, Arts and Sciences : Classics

In this dissertation, I analyze how Empedocles uses language to present himself and his intent. Although Empedocles' contemporaries and more modern readers present him as a scientist or magician, he portrays himself as a god and claims that he will teach others to become a god like him in order to manipulate the universe. In Chapter One, I examine the concept of science from an Aristotelian bias and from the standpoint of modern expectations of science to show that, despite verses that describe how the world works, Empedocles does not follow the patterns of active conversation with other thinkers that are available. His stated intent (fragment 111) is to teach others how to control the universe - cure disease and old age, affect the weather, and raise the dead - rather than learn about it theoretically. In Chapter Two, I will show that although the claims that he makes link him to magicians, he does not present himself as one. Magicians act as intermediaries between men and the gods (at least in the time contemporary with Empedocles); the gods do as the magicians ask them because the magicians have built up a successful relationship through sacrifices and incantations. Empedocles, on the other hand, accomplishes these feats on his own as a god. Chapter Three sets out what sort of god Empedocles is: he is a mortal, long-lived god in contrast with the immortal gods - Love, Strife, and the four roots (fire, water, air, and earth). Anyone can become a god, as I illustrate, as long as one is pure enough and wise enough. Chapter Four returns to Empedocles' use of language to express his intent. Since controlling the world can be a dangerous lesson, Empedocles uses ambiguity and the model of initiation into a mystery intentionally to conceal the lessons from hoi polloi. The audience must decode Empedocles' message before they can make further observations of the world on their way to meeting their goal. Following the model for initiation, the readers will come to the ultim (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Holt Parker PhD (Committee Chair); William Johnson PhD (Committee Member); Susan Prince PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, History

My dissertation, entitled “Science versus Religion: The Influence of European Materialism on Turkish Thought, 1860-1960,” is a radical re-evaluation of the history of secularization in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. I argue that European vulgar materialist ideas put forward by nineteenth-century intellectuals and scientists such as Ludwig Buchner (1824-1899), Karl Vogt (1817-1895) and Jacob Moleschott (1822-1893) affected how Ottoman and Turkish intellectuals thought about religion and society, ultimately paving the way for the radical reforms of Kemal Ataturk and the strict secularism of the early Turkish Republic in the 1930s. In my dissertation, I challenge traditional scholarly accounts of Turkish modernization, notably those of Bernard Lewis and Niyazi Berkes, which portray the process as a Manichean struggle between modernity and tradition resulting in a linear process of secularization. On the basis of extensive research in modern Turkish, Ottoman Turkish and Persian sources, I demonstrate that the ideas of such leading westernizing and secularizing thinkers as Munif Pasha (1830-1910), Besir Fuad (1852-1887) and Baha Tevfik (1884-1914) who were inspired by European materialism provoked spirited religious, philosophical and literary responses from such conservative anti-materialist thinkers as Sehbenderzade Ahmed Hilmi (1865-1914), Said Nursi (1873-1960) and Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar (1901-1962). Whereas the westernizers argued for the adoption of western modernity in toto, their critics made a crucial distinction between the “material” and “spiritual” sides of western modernity. Although the critics were eager to adopt the material side of western modernity, including not only the military and economic structures but also the political structures of Europe, they had serious reservations when it came to adopting European ethics and secular European attitudes toward religion. The result was two different and competing approaches to modernity in Turkish intellectual (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Carter V. Findley PhD (Committee Chair); Jane Hathaway PhD (Committee Member); Alan Beyerchen PhD (Committee Member); Douglas A. Wolfe PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; European History; History; Islamic Studies; Middle Eastern History; Middle Eastern Literature; Middle Eastern Studies; Near Eastern Studies; Religion; Religious History; Science Education; Science History; World History

BA, Oberlin College, 2007, History

George Frederick Wright was an Oberlin-educated theologian and self-taught geologist who lived from 1838 to 1921. He was among the most influential Christian interpreters of Darwinism as Americans began to debate the theory in the 1870s and 1880s. In his writings, Wright illustrated a method for reconciling evolutionary theory with Christianity. Wright himself was a Calvinist, and he argued that his own conservative theological tradition shared important characteristics with Darwinism. At the turn of the century, however, Wright began to criticize both Darwinism in particular and evolutionary thought generally. A decade later, he was among the authors of a series of pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals, and thus a standard bearer for the conservative wing of American Protestantism that soon developed into the fundamentalist movement. Furthermore, one of the three articles he contributed to The Fundamentals, “The Passing of Evolution,” was a forceful attack on evolutionary thought. Wright's ideas about Darwinism and Christianity changed dramatically over the course of his life not only because he became more concerned about the place of “orthodox” Protestantism in modern America – although he certainly did – but also because evolutionary and theological thought themselves evolved. In 1880 Wright perceived a number of similarities between the Darwinian and Calvinist orthodoxies. By 1910 the roles of Darwinism in evolutionary theory and Calvinism in Protestant theology had diminished, and the common ground which Wright had staked out as his own field of study was disappearing.

Committee: Clayton Koppes (Advisor) Subjects:

MA, Kent State University, 2012, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

This thesis examines the spiritualist movement from the turn of the nineteenth century and how this group acted as a bridge between the past and their present, by looking at the contemporary writing supporting and criticizing the movement. The spiritualist movement had drawn numerous critics and supporters due to its incorporation of science and psychic mediums into its version of Christianity. The spiritualists were a diverse group unified by one tenet, the belief in an afterlife and the ability of mediums to connect with the dead. The spiritualists' goal was to bridge the gap between the past and the present, through the use of psychic mediums. These mediums were tested, and their phenomena explained by the emerging science of the time as a way to prove their experiences were legitimate and in doing so validate Christianity. By doing this the movement was connecting Christianity of the past to the science of the present and modernizing the religion. This approach led many traditional Christians to oppose the movement and attack them as frauds or as having dealings with evil. This thesis looks closely at how the movement developed due to its links to Christianity, science, and by focusing on the importance of the individual medium.

Committee: Dr. Kenneth Bindas (Advisor) Subjects: American History; History; Religious History

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2007, Psychology/Experimental

This paper focused on differences between science and religion based on McCauley's (2000) proposal that science and religion are cognitively different. The cognitive distinction between science and religion proposed by McCauley parallels a distinction within the dual-process theories of reasoning literature between two information processing systems, Analytic and Intuitive. The present studies explored differences between types of context (religion or science) on processing and recall. Specifically, reasoning and recall were investigated within a science or religion context, hypothesizing that science context would elicit Analytic processing whereas religion context would elicit Intuitive processing. Since individual characteristics were hypothesized to influence type of processing independently of context, they were assessed using a demographic questionnaire, the Religious Orientation Scale-Revised (Gorsuch & McPherson, 1989) and a newly constructed Scientific Attitude Assessment scale. The scales were found to be orthogonal in both studies, and to be parallel to dimensions of individual characteristics, indicating they were appropriate measures for classifying individuals. The results of the recall tasks in Study 1 did not support the hypothesis that context elicits one type of processing over the other. Therefore, a more cognitively demanding reasoning task was used in Study 2 to investigate the same hypotheses. Results of Study 2 supported the hypothesis that context elicits one type of processing over the other. However, the effect of context was in the opposite direction as hypothesized with religion context eliciting more Analytic processing and science context eliciting more Intuitive processing. Several possible reasons for the reversed trend in the results are discussed including story construction, participants' dependence on expert knowledge, and measures of individual differences. Directions for future work are suggested.

Committee: Ryan Tweney (Advisor) Subjects: