Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Grief Is A Normal And Natural Process
Grief is a normal and natural process that takes work to get through. It is not easy to let go of close relationships that have existed in our lives. Dealing with the emotions that occur in the grieving process takes much time and energy, and is usually both physically and emotionally demanding. It is normal for people to grieve in very different ways. Some people grieve openly, while others hide their feelings of distress. Some people grieve quickly, while others take a long time to "finish." There is no "right way" to grieve. Each individual comes up with a method of grieving that fits them and their particular loss.
There are a number of conditions that can make it harder for a person to successfully make it through the grief process. For example, sudden losses are harder to deal with than ones that have been anticipated. With anticipated losses, the knowledge that a loss will occur allows people to prepare, both by feeling grief before the fact of the loss and also by planning ways to minimize the negative impact of the loss when it does occur. The loss of a spouse, lover, child, parent, or best friend is usually more deeply felt than the loss of more distant relations and friends. This is because such central relationships have long and deeply felt histories and an intensity of attachment that does not occur with more distant relationships. Central relationships are more deeply and significantly intertwined into the grieving person's sense of self, and thus leave a bigger hole in the grieving person's sense of self when they are lost.
The amount of support a grieving person can draw upon is critical to how successfully he or she will cope with grief. The more that friends, family and community are present and supportive, and the more that the grieving person is able to accept offered support, the better the outcome tends to be. Isolated people tend to have a harder time.
The "fairness" of the loss is also important. Losses that challenge a grieving person's ability to believe that the world is predictable are harder to manage. It is easier to accept the loss of an aged parent who has lived a full life than it is to accept the loss of a child. Death by disease tends to be easier to accept than death by a random, senseless accident.
Best Regards,
Tauqeer Ahmed
Death Penalty, Yes Or No
Few public policy issues have inflamed passions as consistently and as strongly as capital punishment. Religious communities have been deeply involved on both sides of the debate, drawing on teachings and traditions of justice and the dignity of human life. The debate over the death penalty has been complicated in recent years by questions regarding both the fairness of the criminal justice system and the possibility of reform and rehabilitation among death row inmates.
Two-thirds of Americans (68%) support the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to a July 2005 poll. However, public support for the death penalty was somewhat stronger in the late 1990s (74% in 1999). Most Americans continue to oppose the death penalty for those convicted of offenses when they were under age 18, and the Supreme Court cited a national consensus when it abolished the death penalty for minors in March 2005.
Best Regards,
Tauqeer Ahmed
Religion and Science
Science and religion have often been viewed as adversaries. A number of famous battles between scientists and religious authorities have helped to fuel this perception. For instance, Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, who 400 years ago began the first systematic astronomical observations using a telescope, was tried and convicted of heresy by the Catholic Church for his defense of the Copernican model that put the sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the universe. Roughly 250 years later, British naturalist Charles Darwin was criticized by Anglican Church authorities who rejected his theory that life evolved through natural selection, particularly when the theory was explicitly applied to human beings.
There have been and still are scientists who are hostile to religious belief. For instance, British biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, in his bestselling book The God Delusion, argues that many social ills - from bigotry to ignorance - can be blamed, at least in part, on religion. Other scientists, such as Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg, contend that one of the purposes of science is to free people from what they call "religious superstition."
In addition, scientists tend to be much less religious than the public overall. A poll of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in May and June 2009, found that 51% of scientists believe in God or a higher power. That figure is far below the 95% of the American public that professes such belief, according to a Pew Research Center survey of the general public conducted in July 2006.
Religion and Science as Allies
Despite instances of hostility toward religion and high levels of disbelief in the scientific community, however, science and religion have often operated in tandem rather than at cross-purposes. Indeed, throughout much of ancient and modern human history, religious institutions have actively supported scientific endeavors. For centuries, throughout Europe and the Middle East, almost all universities and other institutions of learning were religiously affiliated, and many scientists, including astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and biologist Gregor Mendel (known as the father of genetics), were men of the cloth. Others, including Galileo, physicist Sir Isaac Newton and astronomer Johannes Kepler, were deeply devout and often viewed their work as a way to illuminate God's creation.
Even in the 20th century, some of the greatest scientists, such as Georges Lemaitre (the Catholic priest who first proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory) and physicist Max Planck (the founder of the quantum theory of physics), have been people of faith. More recently, geneticist Francis Collins, the founder of the Human Genome Project as well as President Barack Obama's choice to head the National Institutes of Health, has spoken publicly about how he believes his evangelical Christian faith and his work in science are compatible.
In addition, many scientists, including many who are not personally religious, tend to view science and religion as distinct rather than in conflict, with each attempting to answer different kinds of questions using different methods. Albert Einstein, for instance, once said that "science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind." And the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously referred to this separate but complementary relationship as "nonoverlapping magisteria."
Debates Over Evolution and Other Issues
There are times when these "magisteria" do seem to overlap, however. In the United States, the debate over the origins and development of life offers a compelling example of this conflict. All but a small number of scientists accept Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection; according to the 2009 Pew Research Center survey of scientists, 87% of scientists accept evolution through natural processes. But a complementary May 2009 Pew Research Center poll of public attitudes toward science shows that only 32% of the general public fully embraces Darwin's theory. One-in-five (22%) believe that evolution has occurred but that it has been guided by a supreme being, and 31% contend that humans and other livings things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.
There is a similar divide between the public and the scientific community on the issue of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. But unlike the divide on evolution, which revolves around questions of fact, the division on embryonic stem cell research is largely driven by moral questions, including disputes over the status of embryos. And yet the poll of the public shows that the vast majority of Americans, including religious Americans, hold science and scientists in very high regard.
What is at work here? How can majorities of Americans say they respect science and yet still disagree with the scientific community on some fundamental questions? The answer may be that many in the general public choose not to believe scientific theories and discoveries that seem to contradict religious or other important beliefs. When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, for instance, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people in an October 2006 Time magazine poll said they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept a contrary scientific finding.
Looking Ahead
Meanwhile scientists continue to use increasingly sophisticated instruments - from MRI brain scanners to the Hubble Space Telescope - to probe the natural world, raising the prospect that researchers in one field or another will continue to produce evidence that challenges some core religious beliefs. For example, some scientists claim that recent research on the human brain shows that the brain and the brain alone is the seat of consciousness and that such evidence disproves the existence of a soul.
While religion and science usually strive to answer different questions, the battles over issues such as evolution and the study of consciousness show that they also sometimes tread on each other's turf. So far, at least in the United States, both faith and scientific endeavor have survived these clashes. And if the past is any guide, the United States will likely continue to be a nation of both high levels of religious commitment and high regard for scientific achievement.
Best Regards,
Tauqeer Ahmed
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Introduction To Relationship Problems!
This topic center concerns marriage and marriage-like relationship problems. My aim here is to educate the reader about the nature of such problems and to illuminate what can be done to solve them when that is possible. I am going to use the term 'marriage' here for the most part, but it should be understood that what we have to say applies more or less as readily to domestic unions and most other types of cohabiting committed 'romantic' relationships, whether homosexual or heterosexual in orientation. The state may define marriage rather narrowly, but we take it as a given that relationship problems do not discriminate.
Most people enter into marriage with the best of intentions, assuming that they will remain in a permanent and happy union. Unfortunately, it is not always the case that relationships work out as planned. Many marriages degrade in quality over time and end up in a conflicted state. In recent years, something like 50% of formal marriages made in the United States have ended in divorce. This figure does not include the breakdown of other non-married but otherwise committed unions. Many people discover that it is, in fact, difficult to keep a marriage relationship alive and well. It takes work and mental flexibility that not everyone is willing or able to offer.
Best Regards,
Tauqeer Ahmed
Parenting
Of course you have. From experts to other parents, people are always ready to give you parenting advice. Parenting tips, parents' survival guides, dos, don'ts, shoulds, and shouldn'ts, new ones come out every day.
But with so much information available, how can anyone figure out what really works? How do you know whose advice to follow? Isn't parenting just common sense anyway? How can the experts know what it's like to be a parent in a real house? What's a parent to do?
Try RPM3, a no-frills approach to parenting from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
RPM3 stands for:
- Responding to your child in an appropriate manner.
- Preventing risky behavior or problems before they arise.
- Monitoring your child's contact with his or her surrounding world.
- Mentoring your child to support and encourage desired behaviors.
- Modeling your own behavior to provide a consistent, positive example for your child.
Tauqeer Ahmed
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