Search Results (115)

This article examines the visibility and invisibility of pregnancy in early modern Iberian religious art through artificial intelligence. While sacred imagery in Catholic Spain and Portugal between the 14th and 17th centuries includes representations of the pregnant Virgin Mary and scenes related to maternity, such depictions are often symbolically coded and devoid of embodied detail. Using the Astica Vision AI system, a two-phase methodology was applied to a total of fifty-two artworks depicting the Virgin of Expectation, the Visitation, and the Nativity of the Virgin. In the first phase, images were submitted without context to observe whether the AI could independently identify pregnancy or maternal affect. In the second phase, the same images were reanalyzed with iconographic metadata. Findings show that AI frequently fails to detect gestation in sacred images, and even when context is provided, rarely describes bodily signs or relational affect. These findings reflect the visual logic inherent to sacred art, which tends to prioritize theological meaning over biological or emotional realities. The inclusion of a modern secular photograph of pregnancy highlights the contrast: there, AI readily identifies maternal embodiment, emotion, and connection. This contrast reveals how cultural and doctrinal frameworks shape visual codes of legibility. Rather than a neutral observer, the AI becomes a diagnostic tool, amplifying iconographic silences and revealing how sacred art disciplines perception. The article proposes a new methodological role for machine vision in the humanities: not to mimic human reading, but to uncover what remains unseen in visual culture. Full article

This article examines the ethical and aesthetic stakes of cultural borrowing in fashion through the case of Yves Saint Laurent’s sustained engagement with Moroccan visual and material traditions. Drawing on postcolonial theory, fashion studies, and aesthetic philosophy and supported by visual analysis and qualitative research, this study interrogates the tension between cultural appreciation and appropriation that structures Saint Laurent’s legacy. His designs amplified global visibility for Moroccan craftsmanship, yet this visibility was mediated through Western systems of authorship that privileged the couturier while obscuring the cultural, spiritual, and artisanal labor underpinning the motifs he reinterpreted. Saint Laurent’s own positionality, born within the colonial milieu of French Algeria, further complicates this dynamic, enabling both cultural intimacy and the exercise of hierarchical distance from the traditions he transformed for Parisian haute couture. This discussion also requires acknowledging that Moroccan cultural heritage, shaped by the intertwined influences of Amazigh, Arab, Islamic, and Jewish traditions, embodies religious meanings that extend beyond the purely aesthetic. By considering the religious, symbolic, and communal values embedded within Moroccan aesthetic forms, this article foregrounds the ethical dilemmas that arise when culturally and spiritually situated practices are reframed within Western fashion. This study ultimately contends that acts of borrowing can serve both as homage and erasure, suggesting that the relationship between appropriation and appreciation is better understood as a flexible spectrum rather than a rigid binary. Full article

In recent years, young people have often been portrayed as increasingly detached from traditional forms of religious belonging. Nevertheless, religious affiliation continues to shape how individuals interpret the world—that is, the cultural frameworks and value systems through which, in Weberian terms, they ascribe meaning to an otherwise indeterminate reality. Drawing on a survey conducted among a sample of young Italians in Rome, this study examines the relationship between youth and values by comparing believers and non-believers. The data are weighted to reflect the demographic structure of a comparable population in the European Social Survey. The article explores the intersections between religiosity, spirituality, value orientations, and forms of social participation among young Romans. It relies on a wide range of indicators capturing attitudes toward religion and society, religious and spiritual practices, and the perceived importance of various social issues. The analysis focuses on differences between spiritual and non-spiritual believers, practicing and non-practicing believers, and non-believers. The central questions guiding the study are: What distinguishes young believers from their non-believing peers in these domains? And how do these groups differ in their orientations when classified in this way? Full article

Background: Spirituality and religious diversity are increasingly recognized as essential components of holistic nursing care in global healthcare systems. However, their integration into undergraduate nursing education remains heterogeneous and often insufficiently structured, creating a gap between professional values and students’ preparedness to address spiritual needs in culturally diverse clinical environments. This study aimed to explore nursing students’ perceptions, attitudes, and perceived competencies regarding spirituality, religion, and spiritual care. Methods: A descriptive exploratory survey was conducted on a sample of 69 third-year nursing students (69.6% female; majority aged ≤24 years) enrolled in two universities in Rome, Italy. Data were collected between May and July 2025 using the Nursing Care and Religious Diversity Scale (NCRDS), consisting of 31 items. Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics, internal reliability analyses, group comparisons, and multivariate regression models. Results: Students showed moderate levels of attention to patients’ spiritual needs (mean = 3.11, SD = 0.88) and integration of spirituality into care practice, while high importance was attributed to spiritual care skills. University education was perceived as only partially adequate. Multivariate analyses showed that students’ personal spirituality is positively associated with the assessment of spiritual needs and the perception of competence, while exposure to contexts characterized by greater religious diversity is associated with a lower perception of preparedness. Conclusions: The results highlight a discrepancy between professional values and perceived operational skills, suggesting the need to systematically integrate spirituality and religious diversity into nursing curricula. These findings highlight the need for a structured integration of spirituality and religious diversity into nursing curricula through targeted educational strategies in order to strengthen students’ competencies and promote truly holistic and person-centered care. Full article

This article explores Daniel Kahneman’s concept of system thinking from his book Thinking Fast and Slow (2013) in the context of contemporary spiritual and theological reflection. The question studied here is: What does the intentional use of emotions, dreams and intuition described by Daniel Kahneman as System 1 thinking look like in contemporary spiritual and theological reflection? According to Kanheman, System 1 thinking includes emotions, dreams and intuition. The method for answering the research question is hermeneutical. This means gathering texts that fit Kahneman’s description of System 1 thinking and integrating these concepts into some form of spiritual and theological reflection. Hermeneutical research is text-based. Fifty-three (53) texts were found in a search of various databases. These texts are analyzed noting the impact of System 1 thinking on spiritual and theological reflection. Findings include the following: First, there is a rise in the number of texts using System 1 thinking in spiritual and theological reflection. Second, disciplines outside of theology are practicing spiritual reflection as part of their spiritual care. Third, these non-theological disciplines are also using System 1 thinking in their spiritual reflections. Fourth, there is an awareness and utilization of diverse cultures and faith experiences in spiritual reflection. Fifth, these texts indicate the growth of the demographic of people who are spiritual but not religious and a connection to dreams, emotions and intuition in spiritual and theological reflection. Sixth, there is also a developing overlap between spiritual and theological reflection. Cautions and gaps in the textual analysis are noted as well as future applications. Full article

Traditional dwellings as the products of the combined effects of time, space and agency possess both a dynamic nature and historical continuity. With the progression of globalization and urbanization, the patterns of villages in Southwest China have transformed from enclosed, stable and homogeneous into open, dynamic and diverse. As crucial representations of rural spatial reconstruction and cultural evolution, the form and function of traditional dwellings are undergoing profound transformation and reorganization. The introduction of modern building methods and the shift in living concepts and aesthetic preferences intensify the impact on traditional building techniques, leading to a rupture in the traditional dwelling typological system. From a typological perspective, this study analyzes the transformation process and organizational characteristics of the traditional courtyard house prototype, as well as the social structures and cultural logic it reflects, by integrating the family life cycle, spatial concepts, and residential practices of Dai households. The findings indicate that Dai dwellings have undergone a four-phase typological process. The initial transformation was evident in the architectural details of the main rooms. Secondly, the spatial sequence embodying the clan order gradually disintegrated, and spaces with religious functions were continuously weakened, eventually being replaced by modern residential space dominated by standardized functional zoning. Concurrently, the layout of Dai dwellings was simplified from a four-sided courtyard house into a three-sided courtyard house and ultimately transformed into the layout primarily composed of independent, non-courtyard buildings. Its typological process reflects proactive adaptations to modern residential culture. However, this adaptive transition has also undermined the traditional Dai spatial order and cultural meaning, revealing a tension between cultural adaptation and cultural dissolution. Full article

In many countries today, the practice of health care has become a complicated system of services. The notion of health prevalent in this system is that of catering to physical needs and functions. The role of healthcare professionals becomes a function of this system. This runs against the experience and the worldview of many that professional systems and practices can never be morally and existentially neutral. Traditionally, health care and in particular nursing care have been understood as an element of fostering human flourishing. The question arises: what is lost when health care is no longer thus understood? In this article, the ‘raison d’etre’ of nursing care is explored by highlighting the Judeo-Christian notions of health and care as elements of shalom. The meaning of this concept is illuminated by recent nursing literature. Furthermore, Alasdair MacIntyre’s analysis of ‘social practices’ explains how such a concept runs deep in the capillaries of health care practices like nursing care. It is argued how shalom permeates nursing’s professional values (what nurses aim for), norms (how nurses ought to act), and virtues (who nurses ought to be). This ‘DNA’ of nursing care can combine professional clinical language with religious-moral language, enriching its understandings of health, care, and professional identity. Full article

Meditation-related difficulties have been systematically documented in contemporary contemplative science, yet the prescriptive resources preserved in the ancient Buddhist commentarial literature remain underutilized in comparative research. This study analyzes the case of five hundred monks in the Paramatthajotikā I’s commentary on the Karaṇīya-metta-sutta. During intensive practice, these monks experienced complex psychosomatic symptoms—perceptual disturbances, fear, somatic distress, and cognitive impairment—and received from the Buddha an integrated prescription of five protective practices (pañca rakkhā). Through Pāli textual and comparative analysis with Lindahl et al.’s taxonomy of meditation-related difficulties, this study demonstrates that the monks’ symptoms correspond systematically to the perceptual, affective, somatic, and cognitive domains of the modern taxonomy, with the critical difference residing in interpretive frameworks rather than in the phenomena themselves. The five practices—loving-kindness meditation, protective chant recitation, contemplation of impurity, mindfulness of death, and the arousal of religious urgency—constitute a sequentially structured system progressing from the emotional reframing of fear to the deconstruction of bodily and existential attachment, culminating in the restoration of soteriological motivation. This study argues that Paramatthajotikā I’s prescriptive system provides a historically grounded, soteriologically oriented complement to contemporary contemplative science, particularly in bridging the gap between phenomenological classification and meaning-centered intervention. Full article

Medical mediation (MM) is a collaborative tool for resolving ethically complex disputes in healthcare. Background/Objectives: Though widely recognized in international clinical ethics, it has only been recently introduced in Greece. The objective of this study was (i) to quantify agreement with MM across three clinical scenarios, (ii) to estimate the proportion of professionals that support mediation and institutional training, and (iii) to identify distinct attitudinal profiles using latent class analysis (LCA). Methods: A structured, cross-sectional online questionnaire was completed by 431 healthcare professionals across Greece. The survey included three clinical vignettes (on (1) end-of-life care, (2) religious refusal of treatment, and (3) medical error disclosure), Likert-scale items on attitudes toward mediation, and demographic information. LCA was used to identify patterns of response across the scenarios and differentiate between strongly supportive, moderately supportive, and cautiously positive professional profiles. Results: Participants expressed strong support for mediation across all scenarios (median scores ≥ 9), with the highest support for medical error disclosure (mean 8.67 ± 2.10 and a median of 10). Most participants (97.2%, n = 419) considered mediation at least sometimes effective, and 80.7% (n = 348) endorsed institutional training. However, only 3.0% (n = 13) reported formal training and 1.9% (n = 8) reported being very familiar with MM. LCA revealed three distinct respondent profiles: strongly supportive (73.3%, n = 316), moderately supportive (14.6%, n = 63), and cautiously positive (12.1%, n = 52). Significant trends were observed across profiles for the perceived effectiveness of mediation and support for institutional training (p < 0.01). However, formal training and familiarity with mediation among the participants were low (<5%). Conclusions: Despite limited training and formal implementation, Greek healthcare professionals show high support for MM. The demand and need for structured mediation training and integration into the Greek healthcare system is strong. The identification of distinct attitudinal profiles provides insight into potential variation in organizational readiness for implementing structured mediation training Full article

This study examines the dialectic between “navigating secularism” and “lived religion” in the context of modern Jewish Orthodoxy, focusing on the rulings of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (1910–1995) regarding secular Jews. The research relies on two analytical models: Ravitzky’s theological model, based on the Chazon Ish’s distinction between a “full wagon” and an “empty wagon”; and the phenomenological model of Zohar and Sagi, which examines the halakhic distinction between belonging to the religious collective versus the ethnic collective. Contrary to the consensus of 20th-century halakhic authorities, who applied the category of “captured child” (tinok shenishba) to modern secular Jews, Rabbi Auerbach rejects this categorical expansion and reinstates the traditional halakha: one who publicly desecrates the Sabbath has the status of a gentile in all matters. This normative decision yields far-reaching halakhic implications: prohibition of a secular person’s contact with wine, prohibition of inviting a secular person for festivals, and more. The study identifies an internal tension in Rabbi Auerbach’s rulings: theoretically, he considers whether it might be preferable to die than to live as a gentile, but practically, he permits saving secular Jews on the Sabbath based on extra-halakhic theological reasoning. This tension reflects a conflict between his loyalty to halakhic deontology and his humane character. The study classifies Rabbi Auerbach within the ahistorical approach, which views the halakhic conceptual system as an eternal entity. Nevertheless, the religious public perceives him as a lenient authority toward secular Jews. This gap is explained through Wolfgang Iser’s hermeneutics and the category of “textual indeterminacy”: readers interpret his words through the prism of an expectation for tolerance, based on their perception of his warm personality, thereby creating a subjective textual meaning. Full article

The development of digital technologies had a profound impact on religions, bringing about resistance and adaptations of traditional, theistic systems to this new technological and mediated environment, and on the dynamics of invention and creativity, as demonstrated by the wave of new digital religious movements. Scholars’ attention has mainly been put on the modalities of Searching God on the Net. This emphasis on “traditional” religions led to overlooking another dimension, the resurgence and innovative dynamics of beliefs and practices that fall under the category of “paranormal” or “alternative” forms of thinking, believing and acting—magical, witchcraft, occult, esoteric, spirit, and “spiritual” beliefs (understood in a broad sense)—are indeed also spreading and changing by means of new digital technologies. In this regard, digital technologies are not only “religious” or “sacred”, but they are also “haunted”. Departing from a particular topic of primary importance in this field, the ghost, i.e., the different ways by which spectral forms manifests themselves in the new ecosystems of digital technologies, and the way in which technologies reshape the ghost figure, this paper intends to shed light on the logics of this less considered facet of the digital revolution: the ways it participates in a reinvention of the paranormal and a hauntology of technologies. And in parallel to the quest for God online, it is also possible to engage in virtual ghost hunting. Full article

From past to present, the tree has functioned as a powerful symbol associated with birth, life, death and belief systems across cultures. In relation to cosmic order and divine connection, it has often been conceptualized as a cosmic entity. The tree cult, while sharing universal features rooted in religion and mythology, also carries distinctive meanings within Turkish cultural tradition. Drawing on this framework, this article examines the use of mythological elements in post-1980 Turkish literature through the lens of the tree cult. It first discusses the religious and mythological foundations of the motif and its specific manifestations in Turkish culture. The analysis then focuses on selected works by nine prominent authors—Murathan Mungan, Pınar Kür, Sevinç Çokum, İhsan Oktay Anar, Hasan Ali Toptaş, Orhan Pamuk, Latife Tekin, Murat Gülsoy, and Nazan Bekiroğlu—whose writings display strong representational capacity. Through thematic and textual analysis, the study explores how the tree cult is integrated into these literary works and offers a panoramic perspective on the relationship between mythology and literature in contemporary Turkish narratives. Full article

Techno-theology is reconsidered from a standpoint beyond modern dualisms (spirit/matter; human/nonhuman), asking how contemporary technologies come to mediate ultimate concern and thereby reconfigure meaning, agency, and moral responsibility. The article argues that techno-theology is not a new religious movement but an analytic lens for tracing the mutual mediation between technological systems and theological imaginaries. It shows, first, how technologies increasingly function as carriers of ultimacy, reorganizing authority, hope, and moral expectation. Second, it diagnoses a recurrent modern impasse: even where crude dualisms are rejected, responsibility is practically redistributed across sociotechnical arrangements in ways that diffuse accountability. Third, it proposes “divine ethics” as a minimal evaluative grammar for distinguishing idolatrous re-enchantment (salvation-by-escalation) from relational re-enchantment (limits, accountability, care). Divine ethics is operationalized through three constraints—capacity–responsibility alignment, precaution under irreversible and intergenerational risk, and future-oriented institutionalization—prioritizing prevention over post hoc blame. Full article

Confucian thought inherently contains a religious dimension, with its core concept, “Dao,” serving as its principal expression. The Confucian classical text Yi Zhuan, built upon the Dao of Yin and Yang, presents a system imbued with religious significance. Scholarship on the Yi Zhuan has largely approached its theory of Dao from a human-centered philosophical perspective. By contrast, this paper examines the religious nature of Dao in the Yi Zhuan, as expressed through four key dimensions. In its worldview, Dao is the universal foundation of all existence. It permeates the world through the Dao of Yin and Yang, accounting for the generation and transformation of all things. In the realm of values, Dao serves as the ultimate source, guiding individuals in cultivating virtue and realizing their true nature, thus fostering the moral ideal of unity between Heaven and humanity. Within the sphere of norms, Dao acts as the foundation of ethical principles, directing individuals in the construction of moral frameworks for the real world. This framework is realized through the divine teachings of sages and the understanding of Dao by persons in high station and exemplary persons. In religious and ethical practice, Dao serves as the ultimate point of reference for meaning, with the belief that deviation from Dao results in misfortune, while adherence brings blessings. It calls for individuals to seek practical wisdom, cultivating an awareness of the times and acting in harmony with them, thus providing a foundation for one’s life and purpose, thereby presenting a distinctive Eastern approach to religious and ethical living. This approach offers a new perspective on the interpretive tradition of the Yi Zhuan and its place in contemporary religious studies, while fostering dialogue between philosophical and religious approaches to the Yi Zhuan and Confucian thought more broadly. Full article

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether music empirically associated with therapeutic effects contains intrinsic informational structures that differentiate it from other sound sequences. Drawing on ontology, phenomenology, nonlinear dynamics, and complex systems theory, we hypothesize that therapeutic relevance may be linked to persistent structural patterns embedded in musical signals rather than to stylistic or genre-related attributes. This paper introduces the Discriminating Music Sequences (DiMuSes) method, an unsupervised, structure-oriented analytical framework designed to detect such patterns. The method applies 24 scalar evaluators derived from statistics, fractal geometry, nonlinear physics, and complex systems, transforming sound sequences into multidimensional vectors that characterize their global temporal organization. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) reduces this feature space to three dominant components (PC1–PC3), enabling visualization and comparison in a reduced informational space. Unsupervised k-Means clustering is subsequently applied in the PCA space to identify groups of structurally similar sound sequences, with cluster quality evaluated using Silhouette and Davies–Bouldin indices. Beyond clustering, DiMuSe implements ranking procedures based on relative positions in the PCA space, including distance to cluster centroids, inter-item proximity, and stability across clustering configurations, allowing melodies to be ordered according to their structural proximity to the therapeutic cluster. The method was first validated using synthetically generated nonlinear signals with known properties, confirming its capacity to discriminate structured time series. It was then applied to a dataset of 39 music and sound sequences spanning therapeutic, classical, folk, religious, vocal, natural, and noise categories. The results show that therapeutic music consistently forms a compact and well-separated cluster and ranks highly in structural proximity measures, suggesting shared informational characteristics. Notably, pink noise and ocean sounds also cluster near therapeutic music, aligning with independent evidence of their regulatory and relaxation effects. DiMuSe-derived rankings were consistent with two independent studies that identified the same musical pieces as highly therapeutic.The present research remains at a theoretical stage. Our method has not yet been tested in clinical or experimental therapeutic settings and does not account for individual preference, cultural background, or personal music history, all of which strongly influence therapeutic outcomes. Consequently, DiMuSe does not claim to predict individual efficacy but rather to identify structural potential at the signal level. Future work will focus on clinical validation, integration of biometric feedback, and the development of personalized extensions that combine intrinsic informational structure with listener-specific response data. Full article