In Faith Beyond Belief, Margaret Placentra Johnston correlates the work of 14 spiritual development theorists into a common thread, defining the spiritual journey as a growth process with several progressive stages. What makes her book so insightful and original is that she illustrates the process through 12 real-life stories, bringing each stage to life for the general reader.

Some of these real-life accounts are by nonbelievers; others are by those among the growing numbers of the “spiritual but not religious.” The stories of the nonbelievers-including an ex-Catholic, a former Mormon and a clandestine Muslim apostate who left his community after the attacks of 9/11 show how complete confidence in human reason can lead away from literal religious interpretation, as exemplified in New Atheist writings. But, Johnston points out, while that step is a necessary one on the spiritual path, it is only intermediate. Beyond it, a person rejects human reason as the ultimate gauge of reality.

An optometrist, Johnston has made a career of helping people with their eyesight. Now she offers to correct blurred misconceptions on another level. Faith Beyond Belief points beyond the atheist/believer controversy wrecking such divisive havoc in our culture today. It will help doubters as well as those who are struggling to clarify their own spiritual vision to see things in a new light.  publishers website

As you know, Diogenes believed in the mastery of the self.  He was considered to be eccentric and did outlandish things such as walking about Athens in the daytime with a lit lamp, ‘looking for an honest man.’

In his later life Diogenes was visited in Corinth by Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia, who would go on to conquer Egypt and India.

Diogenes had been sitting in the sunshine, when Alexander walked up to him and asked what he might do for him, given his deprived state, because he owned only his cloak and a dog.

Diogenes looked up at Alexander and said, “You stand aside, so as not to rob me of the light by your shadow.”

Alexander’s guards and followers were scandalized at such blatant disrespect for a king.

And Diogenes asked them, ‘Is your lord a good man or a bad man?’   ‘Good!’ they said. ‘Then my request is reasonable,’ said Diogenes.

And the guards were ready to deal with him harshly, because the implication was that Alexander stood between the people and the truth by his own willfulness pursuit of wealth and power.

But Alexander intervened on the philosopher’s behalf, saying, ‘If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes,’  to which Diogenes replied,  ‘If I were not Diogenes, I should also wish to be Diogenes.’

And Diogenes died at age 89, owning little more than his cloak and his dog, and Alexander died at age 32, having conquered most of the known world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJWk_KNbDHo

In one of her studies, “Handsome Wants as Handsome Does,” published in Biodemography and Social Biology, McClintock examines the effects of physical attractiveness on young adults’ sexual and romantic outcomes (number of partners, relationship status, timing of sexual intercourse), revealing the gender differences in preferences.

“Couple formation is often conceptualized as a competitive, two-sided matching process in which individuals implicitly trade their assets for those of a mate, trying to find the most desirable partner and most rewarding relationship that they can get given their own assets,” McClintock says. “This market metaphor has primarily been applied to marriage markets and focused on the exchange of income or status for other desired resources such as physical attractiveness, but it is easily extended to explain partner selection in the young adult premarital dating market as well.”

McClintock’s study shows that just as good looks may be exchanged for status and financial resources, attractiveness may also be traded for control over the degree of commitment and progression of sexual activity.

Among her findings:

• Very physically attractive women are more likely to form exclusive relationships than to form purely sexual relationships; they are also less likely to have sexual intercourse within the first week of meeting a partner. Presumably, this difference arises because more physically attractive women use their greater power in the partner market to control outcomes within their relationships.
• For women, the number of sexual partners decreases with increasing physical attractiveness, whereas for men, the number of sexual partners increases with increasing physical attractiveness.
• For women, the number of reported sexual partners is tied to weight: Thinner women report fewer partners. Thinness is a dimension of attractiveness for women, so is consistent with the finding that more attractive women report fewer sexual partners.

Another of McClintock’s recent studies (not yet published), titled “Desirability, Matching, and the Illusion of Exchange in Partner Selection,” tests and rejects the “trophy wife” stereotype that women trade beauty for men’s status.

“Obviously, this happens sometimes,” she says, pointing to Donald Trump and Melania Knauss-Trump as an example.

“But prior research has suggested that it often occurs in everyday partner selection among ‘normal’ people … noting that the woman’s beauty and the man’s status (education, income) are positively correlated, that is, they tend to increase and decrease together.”

According to McClintock, prior research in this area has ignored two important factors:

“First, people with higher status are, on average, rated more physically attractive — perhaps because they are less likely to be overweight and more likely to afford braces and nice clothes and trips to the dermatologist, etc.,” she says.

“Secondly, the strongest force by far in partner selection is similarity — in education, race, religion and physical attractiveness.”

After taking these two factors into account, McClintock’s research shows that there is not, in fact, a general tendency for women to trade beauty for money.

“Indeed, I find little evidence of exchange, but I find very strong evidence of matching,” she says. “With some exceptions, the vast majority of couples select partners who are similar to themselves in both status and in attractiveness.”

Source sciencedaily.com