Download or read book A Sceptic s Search for Meaning written by Michael Willesee and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Willesee has always been a news-hound in pursuit of a story.' Sydney Morning HeraldPerfect for fans of Proof of Heaven, this part memoir, part investigation is a spellbinding spiritual quest around the world and deep into the heart of life's ultimate riddle.Is there life after death?Does God exist? How do you explain miracles? In a career spanning fifty years and thousands of stories, legendary Australian journalist Mike Willesee dared to pose the big questions as part of his ongoing quest for meaning.Born into the Catholic faith, with early ambitions to be a priest, he tried to escape his spiritual destiny by pursuing a path as an investigative journalist. But fate kept catching up, as A Sceptic's Search for Meaning reveals. He had a premonition his plane was going to crash, moments before it did.He found himself the neighbour of one of Australia's most passionate investigators of mystical phenomena, who convinced Mike to join him on his quest. Among many such adventures, Mike flew to Bolivia to interview Katya Rivas, dubbed 'God's secretary'. He watched as the barely literate woman who claimed never to have read the Bible wrote page after page of perfect theology in multiple languages. He also sat by her bed as blood started to ooze from her brow, her hands and her feet - the telltale signs of stigmata.Written in his final year as Mike fought a losing battle with cancer, A Sceptic's Search for Meaning is a moving and intriguing tale of one man's attempt to make sense of the profound mysteries of faith.PRAISE FOR MEMOIRS'A cracking tale of good fortune, ambition, risk-taking, self-belief and driving curiosity.' Daily Telegraph

Download or read book A Sceptic s Guide to Atheism written by Peter S Williams and published by Authentic Media Inc. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an accessible response to the contemporary anti-God arguments of the 'new atheists' (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Grayling, etc). Atheism has become militant in the past few years, with its own popular mass media evangelists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. In this readable book, Christian philosopher Peter S. Williams considers the arguments of the 'new atheists' and finds them wanting. Williams explains the history of atheism and responds to the claims that: 'belief in God causes more harm than good'; 'religion is about blind faith and science is the only way to know things'; 'science can explain religion away'; 'there is not enough evidence for God'; 'the arguments for God's existence do not work'. Williams argues that belief in God is more intellectually plausible than atheism.

Download or read book The Original Sceptics written by Myles Burnyeat and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of five essays debating the nature and scope of ancient scepticism, and providing an introduction to the thought of the original sceptics. The book seeks to shed new light on how their thought relates to sceptical arguments in modern philosophy.

Download or read book Knowledge written by Jennifer Nagel and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is knowledge? Is it the same as opinion or truth? Do you need to be able to justify a claim in order to count as knowing it? How can we know that the outer world is real and not a dream? Questions like these have existed since ancient times, and the branch of philosophy dedicated to answering them - epistemology - has been active for thousands of years. In this thought-provoking Very Short Introduction, Jennifer Nagel considers the central problems and paradoxes in the theory of knowledge and draws attention to the ways in which philosophers and theorists have responded to them. By exploring the relationship between knowledge and truth, and considering the problem of scepticism, Nagel introduces a series of influential historical and contemporary theories of knowledge, incorporating methods from logic, linguistics, and psychology, using a number of everyday examples to demonstrate the key issues and debates. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Download or read book A Sceptical Guide to Meaning and Rules written by Martin Kusch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No other recent book in Anglophone philosophy has attracted as much criticism and has found so few friends as Saul Kripke's "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language". Amongst its critics, one finds the very top of the philosophical profession. Yet, it is rightly counted amongst the books that students of philosophy, at least in the Anglo-American world, have to read at some point in their education. Enormously influential, it has given rise to debates that strike at the very heart of contemporary philosophy of mind and language. In this major new interpretation, Martin Kusch defends Kripke's account against the numerous weighty objections that have been put forward over the past twenty years and argues that none of them is decisive. He shows that many critiques are based on misunderstandings of Kripke's reasoning; that many attacks can be blocked by refining and developing Kripke's position; and that many alternative proposals turn out either to be unworkable or to be disguised variants of the view they are meant to replace. Kusch argues that the apparent simplicity of Kripke's text is deceptive and that a fresh reading gives Kripke's overall argument a new strength.

Download or read book A Skeptic s Search for God written by Ralph O. Muncaster and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muncaster shares his fascinating journey from churchgoing childhood to atheism to the search that led him to Christ. He reveals the hard questions he asked and the evidence he found in support of God's existence.A

Download or read book The Demands of Reason written by Casey Perin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-22 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Casey Perin presents a new interpretation of key ideas and arguments in Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism, a founding text of the Sceptical tradition in philosophy. Perin examines Sextus' commitment to the search for truth and to certain principles of rationality, the scope of his scepticism, and its consequences for action and agency.

Download or read book In Search of a Better World written by Karl R. Popper and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays that offers striking new insight into the mind of one of the greatest living philosophers. Popper's subjects range from the beginnings of scientific speculation in Greece to the role of science in the arts.

Download or read book The Skeptics Guide to the Universe written by Dr. Steven Novella and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An all-encompassing guide to skeptical thinking from podcast host and academic neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine Steven Novella and his SGU co-hosts, which Richard Wiseman calls "the perfect primer for anyone who wants to separate fact from fiction." It is intimidating to realize that we live in a world overflowing with misinformation, bias, myths, deception, and flawed knowledge. There really are no ultimate authority figures-no one has the secret, and there is no place to look up the definitive answers to our questions (not even Google). Luckily, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is your map through this maze of modern life. Here Dr. Steven Novella-along with Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein-will explain the tenets of skeptical thinking and debunk some of the biggest scientific myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories-from anti-vaccines to homeopathy, UFO sightings to N- rays. You'll learn the difference between science and pseudoscience, essential critical thinking skills, ways to discuss conspiracy theories with that crazy co- worker of yours, and how to combat sloppy reasoning, bad arguments, and superstitious thinking. So are you ready to join them on an epic scientific quest, one that has taken us from huddling in dark caves to setting foot on the moon? (Yes, we really did that.) DON'T PANIC! With The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, we can do this together. "Thorough, informative, and enlightening, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe inoculates you against the frailties and shortcomings of human cognition. If this book does not become required reading for us all, we may well see modern civilization unravel before our eyes." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson "In this age of real and fake information, your ability to reason, to think in scientifically skeptical fashion, is the most important skill you can have. Read The Skeptics' Guide Universe; get better at reasoning. And if this claim about the importance of reason is wrong, The Skeptics' Guide will help you figure that out, too." -- Bill Nye

Download or read book A Skeptic s Guide to the Mind written by Robert A. Burton, M.D. and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if our soundest, most reasonable judgments are beyond our control? Despite 2500 years of contemplation by the world's greatest minds and the more recent phenomenal advances in basic neuroscience, neither neuroscientists nor philosophers have a decent understanding of what the mind is or how it works. The gap between what the brain does and the mind experiences remains uncharted territory. Nevertheless, with powerful new tools such as the fMRI scan, neuroscience has become the de facto mode of explanation of behavior. Neuroscientists tell us why we prefer Coke to Pepsi, and the media trumpets headlines such as "Possible site of free will found in brain." Or: "Bad behavior down to genes, not poor parenting." Robert Burton believes that while some neuroscience observations are real advances, others are overreaching, unwarranted, wrong-headed, self-serving, or just plain ridiculous, and often with the potential for catastrophic personal and social consequences. In A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind, he brings together clinical observations, practical thought experiments, personal anecdotes, and cutting-edge neuroscience to decipher what neuroscience can tell us – and where it falls woefully short. At the same time, he offers a new vision of how to think about what the mind might be and how it works. A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind is a critical, startling, and expansive journey into the mysteries of the brain and what makes us human.

Download or read book Plato s Sun written by Andrew Lawless and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing an introductory text for philosophy is an exceedingly difficult task. The discipline has spent a century or more in existential crisis with the attack on metaphysics dating back at least to Nietzsche and carried forward in different ways by Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida, to name a few. This constant upheaval has precipitated a climate of self-doubt that goes to the core of philosophy, the result being a strange discipline with many of its most illustrious names proudly announcing its demise. In Plato's Sun, Andrew Lawless takes on the challenge of creating an introductory text for philosophy, arguing that such a work has to take into account of the strangeness of the field and divulge it, rather than suppress it beneath traditional certainties and authoritative pronouncements. Lawless writes within the shadow of post-modern anti-metaphysical skepticism, introducing some of the principal areas of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, and language. Lawless's concern is not to resolve the issues he raises so much as to set them out in a way that lets the reader experience something of the philosopher's struggle. In so doing, Lawless holds fast to the Socratic vision of philosophy as a process of inquiry that values questions above answers, pushing the inquirer beyond his or her answers. With numerous pedagogical features including glossaries of names and key terms, suggested readings, and short chapter summaries, Plato's Sun will be an essential text to new students of philosophy and an important aid in teaching the subject.

Download or read book Spirituality for the Skeptic written by Robert C. Solomon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-04 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By examining the ideas of great thinkers from Kafka to Socrates, this text arrives at an alternative vision of spirituality, one that is non-dogmatic and practical, that should appeal to many seekers looking to make sense of the human condition.

Download or read book The Skeptic s Dictionary written by Robert Carroll and published by Wiley. This book was released on 2004-04-28 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wealth of evidence for doubters and disbelievers "Whether it's the latest shark cartilage scam, or some new 'repressed memory' idiocy that besets you, I suggest you carry a copy of this dictionary at all times, or at least have it within reach as first aid for psychic attacks. We need all the help we can get." -James Randi, President, James Randi Educational Foundation, randi.org "From alternative medicine, aliens, and psychics to the farthest shores of science and beyond, Robert Carroll presents a fascinating look at some of humanity's most strange and wonderful ideas. Refreshing and witty, both believers and unbelievers will find this compendium complete and captivating. Buy this book and feed your head!" -Clifford Pickover, author of The Stars of Heaven and Dreaming the Future "A refreshing compendium of clear thinking, a welcome and potent antidote to the reams of books on the supernatural and pseudoscientific." -John Allen Paulos, author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper "This book covers an amazing range of topics and can protect many people from being scammed." -Stephen Barrett, M.D., quackwatch.org Featuring close to 400 definitions, arguments, and essays on topics ranging from acupuncture to zombies, The Skeptic's Dictionary is a lively, commonsense trove of detailed information on all things supernatural, occult, paranormal, and pseudoscientific. It covers such categories as alternative medicine; cryptozoology; extraterrestrials and UFOs; frauds and hoaxes; junk science; logic and perception; New Age energy; and the psychic. For the open-minded seeker, the soft or hardened skeptic, and the believing doubter, this book offers a remarkable range of information that puts to the test the best arguments of true believers.

Download or read book A Skeptic s Guide to Faith written by Philip Yancey and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the apparent contradictions in the world and explains how the invisible, natural, and supernatural worlds might interact and affect people's daily lives.

Download or read book The Sceptics written by R. J. Hankinson and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of Greek sceptism, from the beginnings of epistemology with Xenophanes, to the final full development Pyrrhonism as presented in the work of Sextus Empiricus.

Download or read book A Skeptic s Guide to Writers Houses written by Anne Trubek and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-07-11 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many ways to show our devotion to an author besides reading his or her works. Graves make for popular pilgrimage sites, but far more popular are writers' house museums. What is it we hope to accomplish by trekking to the home of a dead author? We may go in search of the point of inspiration, eager to stand on the very spot where our favorite literary characters first came to life—and find ourselves instead in the house where the author himself was conceived, or where she drew her last breath. Perhaps it is a place through which our writer passed only briefly, or maybe it really was a longtime home—now thoroughly remade as a decorator's show-house. In A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses Anne Trubek takes a vexed, often funny, and always thoughtful tour of a goodly number of house museums across the nation. In Key West she visits the shamelessly ersatz shrine to a hard-living Ernest Hemingway, while meditating on his lost Cuban farm and the sterile Idaho house in which he committed suicide. In Hannibal, Missouri, she walks the fuzzy line between fact and fiction, as she visits the home of the young Samuel Clemens—and the purported haunts of Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Injun' Joe. She hits literary pay-dirt in Concord, Massachusetts, the nineteenth-century mecca that gave home to Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau—and yet could not accommodate a surprisingly complex Louisa May Alcott. She takes us along the trail of residences that Edgar Allan Poe left behind in the wake of his many failures and to the burned-out shell of a California house with which Jack London staked his claim on posterity. In Dayton, Ohio, a charismatic guide brings Paul Laurence Dunbar to compelling life for those few visitors willing to listen; in Cleveland, Trubek finds a moving remembrance of Charles Chesnutt in a house that no longer stands. Why is it that we visit writers' houses? Although admittedly skeptical about the stories these buildings tell us about their former inhabitants, Anne Trubek carries us along as she falls at least a little bit in love with each stop on her itinerary and finds in each some truth about literature, history, and contemporary America.

Download or read book The Unheard Cry for Meaning written by Viktor E. Frankl and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our age of depersonalization, Frankl teaches the value of living to the fullest. Upon his death in 1997, Viktor E. Frankl was lauded as one of the most influential thinkers of our time. The Unheard Cry for Meaning marked his return to the humanism that made Man's Search for Meaning a bestseller around the world. In these selected essays, written between 1947 and 1977, Dr. Frankl illustrates the vital importance of the human dimension in psychotherapy. Using a wide range of subjects—including sex, morality, modern literature, competitive athletics, and philosophy—he raises a lone voice against the pseudo-humanism that has invaded popular psychology and psychoanalysis. By exploring mankind's remarkable qualities, he brilliantly celebrates each individual's unique potential, while preserving the invaluable traditions of both Freudian analysis and behaviorism.