Kings and spin doctors: pomp and propaganda in ancient Egypt

Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2006

The present study investigated the relationship between spiritual struggles and various types of psychopathology symptoms in individuals who had and had not suffered from a recent illness. Participants completed selfreport measures of religious variables and symptoms of psychopathology. Spiritual struggles were assessed by a measure of negative religious coping. As predicted, negative religious coping was significantly linked to various forms of psychopathology, including anxiety, phobic anxiety, depression, paranoid ideation, obsessive-compulsiveness, and somatization, after controlling for demographic and religious variables. In addition, the relationship between negative religious coping and anxiety and phobic anxiety was stronger for individuals who had experienced a recent illness. These results have implications for assessments and interventions targeting spiritual struggles, especially in medical settings.

Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2019

Many people are persuaded of the existence of psychic phenomena by their own spontaneous experiences of apparent psi. However, without some measure of how often psi-suggestive experiences can be expected to occur purely by chance, it is difficult to determine the epistemic import of these cases. While methods have been developed to find statistical baselines for some spontaneous cases—specifically, ones in which cases of interest can be identified before any verification of their supposedly psychic content has been obtained—many spontaneous cases of purported psi are not identified as such until after some degree of spontaneous verification occurs: for instance, when a person notices a striking correspondence between their mental state and another event to which that state appears to have no physical causal connection. This paper develops a method applicable to these cases—the time-slice method for calculating baseline correspondence potential—and thus enables individuals to determine the epistemic import of their own spontaneous psi experiences.

Imago Mundi, 2020

A major goal of this course is the development of effective technical writing skills. To help you become an accomplished writer, you will prepare several research papers based upon the studies completed in lab. Our research papers are not typical "lab reports." In a teaching lab a lab report might be nothing more than answers to a set of questions. Such an assignment hardly represents the kind of writing you might be doing in your eventual career.

Synthese, 2019

The final chapter of Elgin's True Enough (2017) defends the claim that some mistakes mark significant epistemic achievements. Here, I extend Elgin's analysis of the informativeness of mistakes for epistemic policing. I also examine the type of theory of competence that Elgin's view requires, and suggest some directions in which this can be taken.

Asian Studies, 2024

Since the late 17th century, the Mekong Delta has become a vibrant place for Vietnamese, ethnic Khmer, and ethnic Chinese settlements, forming mixed communities in terms of race and culture. As a new frontier, the Delta has continuously undergone state-sponsored "civilising" processes. The hybridity in folk culture firmly gave birth to various religious sects, especially on the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. Under the viewpoint of late imperial Confucianism, these groups were judged as "heretical sects" and their leaders "heretical masters." Despite being classified as "heretical," local "masters" and their communities still insisted on core Confucian values: benevolence, righteousness and patriotism. Chinese secret societies and rebels evacuated to the Delta in different times, adding forces to the region, especially the cults of Five Lord Buddhas, Maitreya, and the concept of the birth of the wise king. Under French suppression, "heretical masters" changed their religious strategies, supported local military leaders and secret societies to "fight the French and restore Đại Nam." This research aims to investigate and analyse the "heretical" religious movements and ideological transformation of "heretical masters" in the Mekong River Delta in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thereby strengthening the argument that although Vietnam’s local religious elites were marginalized and suppressed by state governance (the Nguyễn Dynasty, French colonialists), they were always cared about national independence and social prosperity, and therefore transformed their sectarian strategies into a special form of religio-political hybridity. National independence was definitely prioritised; therefore, the concept of “loyalty” under the traditional Confucian lens turned to be “patriotism” in the new context of French invasion and colonialisation. This study uses a mixture of extensive field field data conducted between 2015-2017 and 2022-2024 (the primary data source for this study) with limited original texts from the Nguyễn Dynasty and the research findings of selective previous scholars, and applies the theoretical concept of "standardisation" and/or "orthopraxy" from the pre-modern Confucian tradition to examine and analyse political-religious practices, ideological transformation, and implicit narratives among local religious masters in rural Southern Vietnam, confirming that the Mekong Delta has developed an environment of cultural and religious dynamism and pluralism since the late 19th century.

Electrum, 2023

The paper provides a dossier of honors offered to Seleukid and Ptolemaic kings, preceded by a brief introduction.