Everything about John Bowker totally explained
For the Major League Baseball player see John Bowker (baseball)
John Westerdale Bowker (born
July 30,
1935) is a professor of
religious studies who has taught at the universities of
Cambridge,
Lancaster,
Pennsylvania and
North Carolina. He is an Honorary
Canon of
Canterbury Cathedral, a consultant for
UNESCO, as well as a
BBC broadcaster and author and editor of several books.
Life
Bowker was educated at St John's School Leatherhead,
Worcester College, Oxford and
Ripon Hall, Oxford. After national service in RWAAF N Nigeria he became Henry Stevenson Fellow at the
University of Sheffield in 1961. He then moved to the
University of Cambridge where he was
Dean of Chapel of
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (1962) and Assistant Lecturer (1965) and Lecturer (1970). In 1974 he was appointed Professor of Religious Studies at the
University of Lancaster, and in 1984 moved back to Cambridge as
Dean of Chapel of
Trinity College, Cambridge (1984-91) and a Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge (1984-93), also teaching, supervising and researching at the University. From 1992 to 1997 he was Gresham
Professor of
Divinity at
Gresham College, London.
He was appointed Adjunct Professor at the
University of Pennsylvania and at
North Carolina State University in 1986.
He gave many invited lectures including the Wilde (
University of Oxford), Riddell
Newcastle University, Boutwood
University of Cambridge, Scott Holland
University of London, Bicentary
Georgetown University.
He served on various commissions including the Archbishops' Commission on Doctrine (1977-86). He was appointed Vice-President of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science in 1980.
Academic work
Bowker has written and edited many books on world religions. He has also taken a deep interest in science and religion and in particular the relationship of biology and psychology to religion.
In 1983 he edited
Violence and Aggression and 1987 he wrote
Licenced Insanities: religions and belief in God in the contemporary world
In 1992 and 1993 he gave lectures at
Gresham College analysing in detail the claim by
Richard Dawkins that belief in God was a kind of mental virus. In the scientific parts he collaborated with
Quinton Deeley, a student of his whose dissertation on biogenetic structuralism led to his deciding to re-train as a doctor and is now a published psychiatrist. He suggests that this "account of religious motivation...is...far removed from evidence and data." and that, even if the God-meme approach were valid, "it doesn't give rise to one set of consequences... Out of the many behaviours it produces, why are we required to isolate only those that might be regarded as diseased? And who ... decides, and on what grounds, what is diseased? ... there's nothing here as objective as the observation of chicken-pox... the observer...is highly relative".
In his 2005 book
The Sacred Neuron: The Extraordinary New Discoveries Linking Science and Religion he suggests that it's incorrect to view faith and reason as opposing functions. he argues that recent discoveries in the neurosciences are revealing startling facts about the workings of the human mind and how certain ideas are processed into beliefs. His publishers assert that "John Bowker shows that faith and belief are not separate or distinct from reason, but are actually rooted in it. And science--especially neurophysiology--is the key to unlocking how we think about God, about the relationship between different cultures and religions, and about the processes of the human mind that influence our behavior. When rationality and faith are viewed as complementary a new understanding of the human mind can serve as a basis for resolving conflicts between religions and cultures. This discovery has stunning implications for the world."
Bibliography
- World Religions (2006) Dorling Kindersley, ISBN 1-4053-1439-7
- The Sacred Neuron: The Extraordinary New Discoveries Linking Science and Religion Palgrave macMillan (2005) ISBN 1-85043-481-6
- God: A Brief History (2004) Dorling Kindersley, ISBN 1-4053-0490-1
- The Cambridge Illustrated History of Religion (2002 -- editor)
- The Complete Bible Handbook (1998) 2nd Ed (2004)
- The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1997), Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-213965-7
- The Sense of God Oneworld Publications (1995) ISBN 1-85168-093-4
- What Muslims Believe (1995)
- Is God a Virus?: Genes, Culture and Religion (1995) SPCK ISBN 0-281-04812-6
- The Meanings of Death (1991)
- Licenced Insanities: religions and belief in God in the contemporary world (1997) DLT ISBN 0-232-51725-8
- Jesus and the Pharisees (1973)
- The Problems of Suffering in the Religions of the World (1970)
- Targums and Rabbinic Literature (1969)
Sources
Who's Who 2004
Amazon.com
Palgrave MacMillan website
Books citedFurther Information
Get more info on 'John Bowker'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://john_bowker.totallyexplained.com">John Bowker Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
