Download or read book A Replacement for Religion written by The School of Life and published by School of Life Press. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us find ourselves in the odd situation of not believing in religion – but nevertheless being interested in it, moved by it and sympathetic to some of its aims. We may enjoy religious art and architecture, music and community, and even some of the rituals – while being unable to believe in angels, divine commandments or stories about the afterlife. This book is about those feelings and what we might do about them. The School of Life is a secular organisation fascinated by the gaps left in modern society by the gradual disappearance of religion. We’re interested in how hard it is to find a sense of community, how rituals are dying out and how much we sometimes crave the solemn quiet you find in religious buildings. This book lays out how we might absorb the best lessons of religion, update them for our times and incorporate them into our daily lives and societies – without taking on the supernatural or doctrinaire elements. This book tries to rescue some of what remains wise and useful from all that no longer seems (to many of us) to be quite true.
Download or read book Religion for Atheists written by Alain De Botton and published by Signal. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Architecture of Happiness, a deeply moving meditation on how we can still benefit, without believing, from the wisdom, the beauty, and the consolatory power that religion has to offer. Alain de Botton was brought up in a committedly atheistic household, and though he was powerfully swayed by his parents' views, he underwent, in his mid-twenties, a crisis of faithlessness. His feelings of doubt about atheism had their origins in listening to Bach's cantatas, were further developed in the presence of certain Bellini Madonnas, and became overwhelming with an introduction to Zen architecture. However, it was not until his father's death -- buried under a Hebrew headstone in a Jewish cemetery because he had intriguingly omitted to make more secular arrangements -- that Alain began to face the full degree of his ambivalence regarding the views of religion that he had dutifully accepted. Why are we presented with the curious choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle and effective rituals and practices for which there is no equivalent in secular society? Why do we bristle at the mention of the word "morality"? Flee from the idea that art should be uplifting, or have an ethical purpose? Why don't we build temples? What mechanisms do we have for expressing gratitude? The challenge that de Botton addresses in his book: how to separate ideas and practices from the religious institutions that have laid claim to them. In Religion for Atheists is an argument to free our soul-related needs from the particular influence of religions, even if it is, paradoxically, the study of religion that will allow us to rediscover and rearticulate those needs.
Download or read book Against Religion written by Tamas Pataki and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortly before his death, Anton Chekov wrote to Diaghilev: 'I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious.' Tamas Pataki shares that bewilderment.The idea that the world's main religions - particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - have been fatally undermined since the Enlightenment has been proved spectacularly wrong. Statistics show that traditional faith retains strong support: in the USA, 85 per cent of people claim to believe in God; in Nigeria, 98 per cent; in Indonesia, at least 90 per cent; in Ireland, 87 per cent. The revival of Orthodoxy in Russia and Eastern Europe, religious stirrings in atheistic China, the growth of extreme Hindu nationalism in India, and the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism all show that there is still a vital hankering for religion.The religious have become more influential in world affairs than they have been for centuries. This is especially true in the United States, where white Evangelical Christians are having a conspicuous social and political impact. George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, and many of their associates believe themselves to be doing God's will but, according to reports, only the first of these mass-murderers thinks that he is receiving instructions directly from the Almighty. And, while there is general agreement that certain fundamentalisms are a menace to civil society, they are usually seen as transient perversions to be cured by a re-assertion of a more wholesome tradition.Tamas Pataki does not agree. Against Religion is a brave and controversial book which argues that extremist religions are branches of the same noxious tree, and that (nearly) all religion is a disease born of fear and a source of untold misery. He argues that we need to seriously consider the possibility that, for many people, their religiosity is founded on something akin to mental illness or infantilism.
Download or read book The End of Religion written by Bruxy Cavey and published by Tyndale House. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The End of Religion, Bruxy Cavey shares that relationship has no room for religion. Believers and seekers alike will discover anew the wondrous promise found in our savior. And Christ’s eternal call to walk in love and freedom will resonate with readers of all ages and denominations.
Download or read book What is Religion written by Robert George Crawford and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is Religion? serves not only as an introduction to the different belief systems flourishing throughout the modern world, but asks us to consider how the very boundaries of faith might be drawn now and in the future.
Download or read book Losing My Religion written by William Lobdell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Lobdell's journey of faith—and doubt—may be the most compelling spiritual memoir of our time. Lobdell became a born-again Christian in his late 20s when personal problems—including a failed marriage—drove him to his knees in prayer. As a newly minted evangelical, Lobdell—a veteran journalist—noticed that religion wasn't covered well in the mainstream media, and he prayed for the Lord to put him on the religion beat at a major newspaper. In 1998, his prayers were answered when the Los Angeles Times asked him to write about faith. Yet what happened over the next eight years was a roller-coaster of inspiration, confusion, doubt, and soul-searching as his reporting and experiences slowly chipped away at his faith. While reporting on hundreds of stories, he witnessed a disturbing gap between the tenets of various religions and the behaviors of the faithful and their leaders. He investigated religious institutions that acted less ethically than corrupt Wall St. firms. He found few differences between the morals of Christians and atheists. As this evidence piled up, he started to fear that God didn't exist. He explored every doubt, every question—until, finally, his faith collapsed. After the paper agreed to reassign him, he wrote a personal essay in the summer of 2007 that became an international sensation for its honest exploration of doubt. Losing My Religion is a book about life's deepest questions that speaks to everyone: Lobdell understands the longings and satisfactions of the faithful, as well as the unrelenting power of doubt. How he faced that power, and wrestled with it, is must reading for people of faith and nonbelievers alike.
Download or read book Seculosity written by David Zahl and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of our current moment lies a universal yearning, writes David Zahl, not to be happy or respected so much as enough--what religions call "righteous." To fill the void left by religion, we look to all sorts of everyday activities--from eating and parenting to dating and voting--for the identity, purpose, and meaning once provided on Sunday morning. In our striving, we are chasing a sense of enoughness. But it remains ever out of reach, and the effort and anxiety are burning us out. Seculosity takes a thoughtful yet entertaining tour of American "performancism" and its cousins, highlighting both their ingenuity and mercilessness, all while challenging the conventional narrative of religious decline. Zahl unmasks the competing pieties around which so much of our lives revolve, and he does so in a way that's at points playful, personal, and incisive. Ultimately he brings us to a fresh appreciation for the grace of God in all its countercultural wonder.
Download or read book Religion The Basics written by Malory Nye and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-05-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition has been fully revised and updated, and includes new discussions of: the study of religion and culture in the 21st century texts, films and rituals cognitive approaches to religion globalisation and multiculturalism spirituality in the West popular religion.
Download or read book The Blind Eye written by Georgia Blain and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blind Eye captures brilliantly the enervating spirit of an emptied town.' - The Age.
Download or read book Alternative Sociologies of Religion written by James V. Spickard and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovers what the sociology of religion would look like had it emerged in a Confucian, Muslim, or Native American culture rather than in a Christian one Sociology has long used Western Christianity as a model for all religious life. As a result, the field has tended to highlight aspects of religion that Christians find important, such as religious beliefs and formal organizations, while paying less attention to other elements. Rather than simply criticizing such limitations, James V. Spickard imagines what the sociology of religion would look like had it arisen in three non-Western societies. What aspects of religion would scholars see more clearly if they had been raised in Confucian China? What could they learn about religion from Ibn Khaldun, the famed 14th century Arab scholar? What would they better understand, had they been born Navajo, whose traditional religion certainly does not revolve around beliefs and organizations? Through these thought experiments, Spickard shows how non-Western ideas understand some aspects of religions—even of Western religions—better than does standard sociology. The volume shows how non-Western frameworks can shed new light on several different dimensions of religious life, including the question of who maintains religious communities, the relationships between religion and ethnicity as sources of social ties, and the role of embodied experience in religious rituals. These approaches reveal central aspects of contemporary religions that the dominant way of doing sociology fails to notice. Each approach also provides investigators with new theoretical resources to guide them deeper into their subjects. The volume makes a compelling case for adopting a global perspective in the social sciences.
Download or read book Why Religion written by Elaine Pagels and published by HarperLuxe. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is religion still around in the twenty-first century? Why do so many still believe? And how do various traditions still shape the way people experience everything from sexuality to politics, whether they are religious or not? In Why Religion? Elaine Pagels looks to her own life to help address these questions. These questions took on a new urgency for Pagels when dealing with unimaginable loss—the death of her young son, followed a year later by the shocking loss of her husband. Here she interweaves a personal story with the work that she loves, illuminating how, for better and worse, religious traditions have shaped how we understand ourselves; how we relate to one another; and, most importantly, how to get through the most difficult challenges we face. Drawing upon the perspectives of neurologists, anthropologists, and historians, as well as her own research, Pagels opens unexpected ways of understanding persistent religious aspects of our culture. A provocative and deeply moving account from one of the most compelling religious thinkers at work today, Why Religion? explores the spiritual dimension of human experience.
Download or read book It s Not about Religion written by Gregory Harms and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Middle Eastern Studies. When the Middle East is covered on the news or depicted in film, what is shown is a region defined almost exclusively by violence, chaos, and extremism, and a common question often arises in response: Does religion have anything to do with it? In this concise book, Gregory Harms examines a range of topics in an effort to answer the question. As the book's title indicates, the region's woes and instability are in fact not caused by biblical or Islamic factors. Harms reveals a list of entirely secular factors and realities as he examines how and why Americans view the Arab Middle East the way they do; the history of European and U.S. involvement in the region; the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism; and how academics and the mass media tend to discuss the region and its inhabitants. In roughly one hundred pages, the reader is shown a constellation of history and culture that will hopefully help move the conversation of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in a more grounded and precise direction. "For anyone wishing to understand the disconnect between the protests of the 'Arab Spring' that have so inspired us all and the Western image of the Middle East as an eternally fundamentalist, freedom-hating backwater, this book is for you. An informative, lively, and humane look at the real sources of conflict and struggle in the region."—Naomi Klein "Gregory Harms's IT'S NOT ABOUT RELIGION is a welcome breath of reason in the midst of our continued and willful ignorance about all things Islamic, Middle Eastern, and especially, Muslim. Important and timely."—Nick Flynn
Download or read book The One and the Many written by Martin E. Marty and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: E pluribus unum no longer holds. Out of the many have come as many claims and grievances, all at war with the idea of one nation undivided. The damage thus done to our national life, as too few Americans seek a common good, is Martin Marty's concern. His book is an urgent call for repair and a personal testament toward resolution. A world-renowned authority on religion and ethics in America, Marty gives a judicious account (itself a rarity and a relief in our day of uncivil discourse) of how the body politic has been torn between the imperative of one people, one voice, and the separate urgings of distinct identities--racial, ethnic, religious, gendered, ideological, economic. Foreseeing an utter deadlock in public life, with devastating consequences, if this continues, he envisions steps we might take to carry America past the new turbulence. While the grand story of oneness eludes us (and probably always will), Marty reminds us that we do have a rich, ever-growing, and ever more inclusive repertory of myths, symbols, histories, and, most of all, stories on which to draw. He pictures these stories, with their diverse interpretations, as part of a conversation that crosses the boundaries of groups. Where argument polarizes and deafens, conversation is open ended, guided by questions, allowing for inventiveness, fair play, and dignity for all. It serves as a medium in Marty's broader vision, which replaces the restrictive, difficult, and perhaps unattainable ideal of "community" with the looser, more workable idea of "association." An "association of associations" is what Marty contemplates, and for the spirit and will to promote it he looks to eighteenth-century motifs of sentiment and affection, convergences of intellect and emotion that develop from shared experience. And as this book so eloquently reminds us, America, however diverse, is an experience we all share.
Download or read book Excellent Beauty written by Eric Dietrich and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flipping convention on its head, Eric Dietrich argues that science uncovers awe-inspiring, enduring mysteries, while religion, regarded as the source for such mysteries, is a biological phenomenon. Just like spoken language, Dietrich shows that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. Science is the source of perplexing yet beautiful mysteries, however natural the search for answers may be to human existence. Excellent Beauty undoes our misconception of scientific inquiry as an executioner of beauty, making the case that science has won the battle with religion so thoroughly it can now explain why religion persists. The book also draws deep lessons for human flourishing from the very existence of scientific mysteries. It is these latter wonderful, completely public truths that constitute some strangeness in the proportion, revealing a universe worthy of awe and wonder.
Download or read book Science and Religion in Search of Cosmic Purpose written by John F. Haught and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This stimulating book offers candid reflections on the question of cosmic purpose written both by prominent scientists and by scholars representing the world's religious traditions. Examining the issue from a wide variety of perspectives, this is the only current book to deal with cosmic purpose from an interreligious and interdisciplinary perspective. The contributions address the question of whether a religiously-based notion of a purposeful cosmos is consistent with the latest scientific understanding of nature, and whether theology can affirm the presence of divine action without contradicting science.
Download or read book Beyond Religion written by Barbara Mayer and published by . This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As more people find themselves questioning or actually leaving religions of their youth and adult life, Beyond Religion provides answers and guidance for moving ahead on one's own more personal spiritual path - either still within institutionalized religion or beyond any singular religious belief.
Download or read book An Awareness of What is Missing written by Jürgen Habermas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his recent writings on religion and secularization, Habermas has challenged reason to clarify its relation to religious experience and to engage religions in a constructive dialogue. Given the global challenges facing humanity, nothing is more dangerous than the refusal to communicate that we encounter today in different forms of religious and ideological fundamentalism. Habermas argues that in order to engage in this dialogue, two conditions must be met: religion must accept the authority of secular reason as the fallible results of the sciences and the universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality; and conversely, secular reason must not set itself up as the judge concerning truths of faith. This argument was developed in part as a reaction to the conception of the relation between faith and reason formulated by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2006 Regensburg address. In 2007 Habermas conducted a debate, under the title ‘An Awareness of What Is Missing', with philosophers from the Jesuit School for Philosophy in Munich. This volume includes Habermas's essay, the contributions of his interlocutors and Habermas's reply to them. It will be indispensable reading for anyone who wishes to understand one of the most urgent and intractable issues of our time.
