Famous Dutch Actor Turned Orthodox Hermit

The Dutchman actor and puppeteer Jozef van den Berg was born on 22 August 1949, and at the height of his fame he abandoned all (family, friends, money, fame and career) and he became an Orthodox hermit in a hut in the village Neerijnen in the Netherlands. This was after he met Elder Sophrony in Essex, Elder Porphyrios in Athens and Elder Paisios on Mount Athos in the years 1989 and 1990.

The Panagia and Medicine: The Expectation of a Miracle

Panagia Giatraina

By Alexander Giatzidi, M.D.

For Hellenism, August is the month of the Panagia. According to Greek Christian tradition, the person of the Panagia is closely linked with the expectation of the healing of a person from human pathologies.

Book Review: "Our Necessary Shadow: The Nature and Meaning of Psychiatry"

Unable to give a satisfactory materialist explanations to free will, consciousness and the immaterial mind, psychiatry has been on a downward spiral in recent years as a science, though it once enjoyed high status among the sciences. Below is a link to a review from the Washington Post of Our Necessary Shadow: The Nature and Meaning of Psychiatry, by Oxford social psychiatrist Tom Burns, which tries to unpack the problems, while defending psychiatry as a legitimate medical specialty:

Book review: ‘Our Necessary Shadow,’ on the nature of psychiatry, by Tom Burns

So, How Cool Are You?

By Archimandrite Paul Papadopoulos

Unbelief, is not cool.

Sin, is not cool.

To simply exist for your desires, is not cool.

To talk without doing, is not cool.

To live in the shell of your "ego", is not cool.

To do something because "most do it", is not cool

The Science (Fiction) of the 10 Percent Brain Myth

Science Fiction movies hardly ever employ valid or good science, but lately a string of movies have come out of Hollywood that build off the myth that we only use ten percent of our brains. A few years ago Limitless played off this myth, and more recently Transcendence and Lucy. However the complexity of the brain is based on the fact that it is a vast network that works as a whole to be able to do what it does. One could just pass this myth over as silly if it wasn't for the fact that the majority of Americans actually believe it to be true. A study last year from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research concluded that 65 percent of Americans accepted the 10 percent myth as fact. Unfortunately, even when Mythbusters proved this myth was not true, they still conceded by saying we only use 35% of our brain, which is also not true. No doubt the internet has done much to spread this myth, along with the equally mythical right brain/left brain dichotomy, but one could also point out that a common feature in all the films mentioned is that when we are able to use all the functioning of our brain, we almost have god-like qualities. It is a secularists dream of self-deification realized. It is no wonder that the origins of this myth lie in thinkers who are popular among New Agers, which is a belief system centered on self-deification and realizing the god within us all.