Published date: Saturday, July 01, 2006
By: Kirsten Birkett
There are many ways of putting together the fields of theology and psychology, not all of them equally fruitful.
What is the relationship between Christianity and secular psychology? Are they two totally incommensurable approaches to human beings? Are they simply answering different questions? Can they profitably interact?
Files: birkett-christianity-psychotherapy.pdf
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Conscious objections: God and the consciousness debates
Published date: Sunday, June 18, 2006
By: Kirsten Birkett
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Does human consciousness refute Christianity?
Francis Crick, Nobel prizewinner for his work on DNA, writes:
‘You’, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.1
This was Crick’s ‘astonishing hypothesis’, from which came the title of his famous book. The hypothesis is that the
Published date: Saturday, January 01, 2005
By: Kirsten Birkett
Scientists wrestle with philosophy; theologians struggle with biology. The contemporary attempt to integrate these fields still has a long way to go.
To what extent do the biological/ neurobiological sciences help us understand issues of personhood and soul? To some, the answer is obvious: entirely. It is increasingly common to find cognitive scientists claiming not only that neurology is everything and consciousness simply one property of brain
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Published date: Wednesday, November 17, 2004
By: Kirsten Birkett
In 1995, after completing my PhD on magic and the Reformation in England, I found myself being interviewed on talkback radio about witchcraft. It was a rather uneven interview: the interviewer was far more interested in one of the callers, a self-confessed witch, than she was in my academic research.
Most of the book is a collection of source material about witchcraft, including folklore, theology and legal writings; the best collection I have come
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