Unlimited Love: Altruism, Compassion, and Service
Stephen G. Post

In Unlimited Love, author Stephen Post presents an argument for the creation of a new interdisciplinary field for the study of love from a scientific perspective. These insights are essential to our future; in fact, Teilhard de Chardin noted that the discovery of the scientific understanding of the power of unselfish love would be as significant in human history as the discovery of fire. In this book, Post outlines the challenges of exploring the intersection of science, human experience, and the underlying metaphysics of divine love.
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Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How the Simple Act of Giving Can Bring You a Longer, Happier, Healthier Life
Stephen Post & Jill Neimark

A longer life. A happier life. A healthier life. Above all, a life that matters—so that when you leave this world, you’ll have changed it for the better. If science said you could have all this just by altering one behavior, would you?

Dr. Stephen Post has been making headlines by funding studies at the nation’s top universities to prove once and for all the life-enhancing benefits of caring, kindness, and compassion. The exciting new research shows that when we give of ourselves, especially if we start young, everything from life-satisfaction to self-realization and physical health is significantly affected. Mortality is delayed. Depression is reduced. Well-being and good fortune are increased. In their life-changing new book, Why Good Things Happen to Good People, Dr. Post and journalist Jill Neimark weave the growing new science of love and giving with profoundly moving real-life stories to show exactly how giving unlocks the doors to health, happiness, and a longer life.

The astounding new research includes a fifty-year study showing that people who are giving during their high school years have better physical and mental health throughout their lives. Other studies show that older people who give live longer than those who don’t. Helping others has been shown to bring health benefits to those with chronic illness, including HIV, multiple sclerosis, and heart problems. And studies show that people of all ages who help others on a regular basis, even in small ways, feel happiest.

Why Good Things Happen to Good People offers ten ways to give of yourself, in four areas of life, all proven by science to improve your health and even add to your life expectancy. (And not one requires you to write a check.) The one-of-a-kind “Love and Longevity Scale” scores you on all ten ways, from volunteering to listening, loyalty to forgiveness, celebration to standing up for what you believe in. Using the lessons and guidelines in each chapter, you can create a personalized plan for a more generous life, finding the style of giving that suits you best.

The astonishing connection between generosity and health is so convincing that it will inspire readers to change their lives in ways big and small. Get started today. A longer, healthier, happier life awaits you.

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Altruism and Altruistic Love - Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue

Stephen G. Post, Professor, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Lynn G. Underwood, Vice President, Fetzer Institute, Jeffrey P. Schloss, Professor of Biology, Westmont College, and William B. Hurlbut, Physician and Lecturer in the Program in Human Biology, Stanford University.

This is a collaborative examination of one of humanity's essential and definining characteristics by reknowned researchers from various disciplines. It examines the evolutionary, neurological, developmental, psychological, social, cultural and religious aspects of altruistic behaviour. Presenting definitions, a historical overview, a review of contemporary reserach, and debates in various disciplines, this fascinating work provides much food for thought about altruism.

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Unexpected Grace - Stories of Faith, Science, and Altruism
Bill Kramer

In Unexpected Grace Bill Kramer offers a rare look into the human side of the world of scientific research. He goes behind the scenes of four scientific investigations on diverse aspects of the study of unlimited love and offers uplifting portraits of human beings struggling to understand and improve the complex issues facing them. He explores the dynamics between the researchers, the subjects they study, and the participants in the studies, and eloquently tells their personal stories. The stories touch on vastly different social and human issues, but all are connected by love.

The first is the story of Courtney Cowart, who was part of a group of theologians who met at Trinity Place in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, not knowing her experience would become the subject of a study. The story of how the group struggled to survive and the formation of a practical, effective altruistic community is heartrending and inspiring. This is followed by a description of a University of California Santa Cruz psychology department study on the dynamics of friendship and prejudice that completely changed the perceptions of those involved.

The third study, from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, focused on the benefits of religion on mental and physical health, which led its researcher to a greater understanding of forgiveness, humility, and grace. The final powerful story is about a physiology of love study conducted in Iowa City. Here, a functional MRI is the vehicle for measuring empathy and brings the researcher to wonder, “Is there a point at which empathy shuts down and we turn away?” Ultimately she comes to recognize that past experiences influences our ability to respond emphatically.

Each story candidly unveils the transformations the researchers and their subjects experienced in the course of their work. This illuminating book, with its unique insights, will appeal to educators, researchers, students, study participants, and everyone who wonders what goes on behind the scenes of investigative studies.

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The Altruism Reader - Selections from Writings on Love, Religion, and Science
Edited by Thomas Jay Oord

This anthology brings together for the first time leading essays and book chapters from theologians, philosophers, and scientists on their research relating to ethics, altruism, and love. Because the general consensus today is that scholarship in moral theory requires empirical research, the arguments of the leading scholars presented in this book will be particularly important to those examining issues in love, ethics, religion, and science.

The first half of The Altruism Reader offers key selections from religious texts, leading contemporary scholars, and cutting-edge ethicists. Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism are represented. Among the highly respected writers are Thomas Aquinas, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, John Polkinghorne, Stephen Pope, Louis Fischer, Amira Shamma Abdin, Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, and Daniel Day Williams.

Primary readings on love and altruism from the sciences are featured in the second half of the book. Here the focus is on anthropology, psychology, sociology, biology, and neurology, with material written by Daniel C. Batson, David Sloan Wilson, Robert Wright, Stephen G. Post, Robert Axelrod, Richard Dawkins, Holmes Rolston III, and other renowned scientists and philosophers.

“Virtually all people act—and often talk—as if they have some inkling about love. We speak about loving food, falling in love, loving God, feeling loved, and loving a type of music. We say that love hurts, love waits, love stinks, and love means never having to say you’re sorry. We use the word and its derivatives in a wide variety of ways. . . . My own definition of love is this: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well-being.”

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Altruism in World Religions
Edited by Jacob Neusner, Bruce Chilton

In 1830 philosopher Auguste Comte coined the term altruism to provide a general definition for the act of selflessly caring for others. But does this modern conception of sacrificing one's own interests for the well-being of others apply to the charitable behaviors encouraged by all world religions? In Altruism in World Religions prominent scholars from an array of religious perspectives probe the definition of altruism to determine whether it is a category that serves to advance the study of religion.

Exploring a range of philosophical and religious thought from Greco-Roman philia to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, from Hinduism in India to Buddhism and the religions of China and Japan, the authors find that altruism becomes problematic when applied to religious studies because it is, in fact, a concept absent from religion. Chapters on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam reveal that followers of these religions cannot genuinely perform self-sacrificing acts because God has promised to reward every good deed. Moreover, the separation between the self and the other that self-sacrifice necessarily implies, runs counter to Buddhist thought, which makes no such distinction.

By challenging our assumptions about the act of self-sacrifice as it relates to religious teachings, the authors have shown altruism to be more of a secular than religious notion. At the same time, their findings highlight how charitable acts operate with the values and structures of the religions studied.

 

Human Nature and the Freedom of Public Religious Expression
Stephen G. Post

Drawing on current research in science and religion, distinguished bioethicist Stephen G. Post provocatively argues that human beings are, by nature, inclined toward a presence in the universe that is higher than their own. In consequence, the institutions of everyday life, such as schools, the workplace, and the public square, are not justified in censoring the spiritual and religious expression that freely arises from the wellspring of the human spirit.

Post believes that the privatization of religious expression, coupled with the imposition of a secular monism, is a departure from true liberal democracy in which citizens are free to assert themselves in ways that manifest their full nature. Utilizing research in the neurosciences, psychiatry, the social sciences, and evolutionary psychology, he provides scientific information supporting the idea, familiar to theories of natural law, that religious expression and freedom are essential human goods. In developing this perspective, Post also engages in a critical conversation with secular existentialism.

Human Nature and the Freedom of Public Religious Expression offers an alternative to the views of political philosophers such as Richard Rorty, and educators such as John Dewey, who fail to acknowledge the unique contribution that religious language, when thoughtfully implemented, makes to the tone and content of public debate and education. Post’s perspective privileges no particular religion, but rather asks that adherents to all faiths, including secularism, be allowed freely to express their core values in a civil, respectful, and public manner. Post calls for a recovery of the full meaning of liberal democracy in all domains of public life, so that we might again discover the value of freedom of expression.

 

The Ways and Power of Love
New Edition of Pitirim Sorokin Book on Altruistic Love Released

The Ways and Power of Love was originally purchased in 1954 when Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968) was in the twilight of his career and leading the Harvard Research Center in creative altruism. His elaborate scientific analysis of love with regard to its higher and lower forms, its causes and effects, its human and cosmic significance, and its core features constitutes the first study on this topic. Sorokin concluded that with the birth of the atomic age, humanity needed more than ever a quantum leap both in the scientific understanding of altruistic love and its implementation. By the late 1940s, his attention was focused entirely on love and its manifestations in compassion, altruism, and generosity. He was especially interested in discovering more about how love for others is related to felt participation in a Presence that is higher than our own and that serves as a source of unlimited love across all the divisions of tribal, religious, political and ethnic loyalties.

Sorokin was the only absolutely essential 20th century pioneer in the study of love at the interface of science and religion. Bringing The Ways and Power of Love back into print allows a new generation of readers to appreciate Sorokin's genius and to move forward with his endeavor at a time when civilization itself continues to be threatened by a marked inability to live up to the ideal of love for all humankind. It is certainly right to hope, with Sorokin, that progress in knowledge about love can move humanity forward to a better future. Turning the sciences towards the study of love is no easy task, but it can and must be done.

This edition of The Ways and Power of Love features a new introduction by Stephen G. Post, professor of biomedical ethics at Case Western Reserve University and president of the newly-formed Institute for Research on Unlimited Love.

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Love That Works: The Art and Science of Giving

Author Bruce Brander offers a fresh look at love and romance. Brander draws on history, theology, literature, psychology, and sociology to show why romance is a notoriously poor basis for stable, loving relationships. He points out that in past generations, when romance was relatively safe and sweet, people tempered its impetuous urges with other types of love that are all but forgotten in our time. Changes in romance over the past century reflect trends in the culture as a whole, he explains: from religious to secular; from duty-centered to self-centered; from humane to indifferent; from stress on responsibilities to emphasis on rights; from supportive community to impersonal society; from serving, contributing, and cooperating to competing and consuming. Romance as we do it today fails so often because it is a vastly incomplete mode of loving that arises from wishes and fantasies. To make close relationships work again, Brander says, we need to understand the dynamics of love and rediscover types of love that are linked to higher levels of emotional maturity. He illuminates the reasons so many of us are having a difficult time finding love that lasts. His insights clarify what we are doing and what we can aim for. His research provides stepping stones that can help us attain greater emotional health and spiritual maturity. By applying lessons from history to our fast-paced world, we can not only fall in love, but rise to love.

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Science of Love: The Wisdom of Well-Being
Thomas Jay Oord

This book explores a nascent field that is investigating the love-and-science symbiosis. Scholars involved in this research are methodologically investigating cosmology, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, neurology, sex and romance, and the role of emotions as each relates to love. They also look at religious, ethical, and philosophical issues, such as virtue, creation ex nihilo, progress, divine action, agape, values, religious practices, pacifism, sexuality, friendship, freedom, and marriage. These issues all affect the ways in which people understand God, each other, and the world in which we live. Exploring these connections inspires creative hypotheses for how we might better comprehend both the sacred and the scientific. Thomas Jay Oord, the official theologian for the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, is one of the top scholars involved in researching this new field. In Science of Love, he examines the varied dimensions of love, including why people regard love so highly, and he illuminates the love-science symbiosis for both scholars and general readers. Oord contends that progress can best be made when religion and science work together to both understand and promote love. He concludes by humbly suggesting a hypothesis that envisions deity as open, relational, interactive, and most importantly, essentially loving. Such a vision, he notes, corresponds with most scientific hypotheses about the nature of existence. And it provides a basis for imitation of the divine through love.
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Research on Altruism and Love: An Annotated Bibliography of Major Studies in Psychology, Sociology, Evolutionary Biology, and Theology

Edited by Stephen G. Post, Byron Johnson, Michael E. McCullough, and Jeffrey P. Schloss

Research on Altruism and Love is a compendium of annotated bibliographies reviewing literature and research studies on the nature of love. An essay introduces each of the annotated bibliographies. Organized into four listings, each represents a distinct area of study in this emerging academic discipline. A Section on religious love and its interaction with science presents classical and contemporary literature related to the science-and-love issues or supporting literature from the perspective of religion. Listings on personality and altruism provide a broad overview of the literature concerning characteristics associated with altruism, such as personality, gender, and socio-demographics. An area on evolutionary biology presents the most significant works on altruism and love in the field of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. Finally, a section on the sociology of volunteer behavior focuses on the connections between helping behavior and religious organizations, including general voluntary associations. Profiles of lives ennobled by purpose further illustrate how and why people express unselfish love. Their examples offer hope for a future in which the positive side of human behavior is expressed, steering us away from bitterness, hatred, and violence.

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