Download or read book An Intelligent Person s Guide to Religion written by John Haldane and published by Overlook Press. This book was released on 2005-10-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live, allegedly, in a postmodern age in which we have cast aside the narrative fantasies of the pre-modern era. If postmodernism represents the final abandonment of all grand theories, where does religion stand? If religion is a particularly unbelievable form of explanation, why does it power still affect social and political change? Here, like the skeptics of our age, the author asks, What has theology ever had to say that was of the slightest use to anyone? He argues that religion without God is like a car without an engine, and draws on many aspects of human culture to offer a defense of religion that is not only credible but necessary in an age when postmodernism itself has been exposed as a cruel illusion.
Download or read book An Intelligent Person s Guide to Atheism written by Daniel Harbour and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A controversial study that argues for the value of atheism in modern society. The debate about atheism has staled since the time of Bertrand Russell. In this work, Daniel Harbour returns to its core issues - the existence of God, the values of faith, the role of religion in society - and casts them in an entirely new light. The real question, he argues, is how we should consider our urge to understand the world. Only then can we ask ourselves whether atheism or theism forms part of a coherent worldview. This new debate between atheism and theism forces us into an investigation of philosophy, science, history, ethics and aesthetics, and a desire for intellectual integrity and commitment to truth. It is far removed from the usual listing of the errors of theism. Not can atheism be equated with denialism. It holds real and practical implications for the place of religion and the obligations of atheists in our society.
Download or read book An Intelligent Person s Guide to Catholicism written by Alban McCoy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-05-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addresses the key questions that non-Catholics—and even Catholics—have about Roman Catholicism.
Download or read book The No Nonsense Guide to Religion written by Symon Hill and published by New Internationalist. This book was released on 2010 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion is a term which is often used in the media and public life without any clarification. However, it is a word that encompasses hundreds of different beliefs. It is also a loaded word that has a different meaning for each person. Religion can be seen as a source of war and peace, love and hate, dialogue and narrow-mindedness. Today, thanks to the globalisation of communications, more people than ever before belong to a different religious community than their parents. This No-Nonsense Guide considers how religion has shaped culture.
Download or read book How to Think About God written by Mortimer J. Adler and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1991-07-16 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Adler extends and modernizes the argument for the existence of God developed by Aristotle and Aquinas without relying on faith, mysticism, or science. Instead, he uses a rationalist argument to lead the reader to a point where he or she can see that the existence of God is not necessarily dependent upon a suspension of disbelief. Lightning Print On Demand Title
Download or read book An Intelligent Person s Guide to Modern Culture written by Roger Scruton and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Received by the British press with equal acclaim and indignation, this book sets out to define and defend high culture against the world of pop, corn, and popcorn. It shows just why culture matters in an age without faith, and gives an extended argument, drawing on philosophy, criticism, and anthropology, against the "post-modernist" world-view. Scruton offers a penetrating attack on deconstruction, on Foucault, on Nietzschean self-indulgence, and on the "culture of repudiation" which has infected the modern academy. But his book is not only negative. It is a celebration of the true heroes of modern culture and a call to the higher life. The American edition of this famous and notorious work has been revised to take account of the controversy which it has inspired, and contains new material specially directed to Americans.
Download or read book An Intelligent Person s Guide to Judaism written by Shmuel Boteach and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does it mean nothing at all that we are spiritual beings? What does one of the world's oldest religions have to say? Convinced that Judaism possesses a core of wisdom that appeals to everyone, Shmuley Boteach ferociously argues against Jews seeking piety in abstractions, in rationalizing injustice, in explaining the Holocaust away as a punishment for assimilation. He pleads for recognition that Judaism is not about death or suffering, but is about seeking optimism and spirituality. In a modern world riddled with angst, this enlightening and provocative book poses a new outlook on Judaism and spiritual life today. --
Download or read book An Intelligent Person s Guide to Medicine written by Theodore Dalrymple and published by Gerald Duckworth & Company Limited. This book was released on 2001 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Health is on of those subjects that seems easy to define and then, the closer one gets, is more and more difficult to understand. Does the health of a schizophrenic really improve by being sedated and kept in an asylum? Is a course of Prozac or psychotherapy aimed to make someone happy really a medicine? These incompatible views are most visible in the NHS which has over the decades become the focus of all these projections of health. At the expense of the taxpayer many are being cured while there is no money for some of those who have physical ailments in a real sense. In this book, Theodore Dalrymple sets out to tear into the myths that he believes our politicians have created, with anecdotes from his own experience as a doctor.
Download or read book Finding Faith written by Brian D. McLaren and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2000-06-27 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there a God? - What might God be like? - What is the relationship between faith and certainty? - Can intelligent people believe in spiritual realities? - Why are there so many religions? - Is it possible to experience a relationship with God--and if so, how? If you've asked questions like these, you're in good company. From songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Jewel Kilcher to TV shows such as The X Files and Touched by an Angel, the media and the arts reflect postmodern men and women's search for a living faith and a spiritually oriented life. Real faith isn't blind believism. It is a process that engages your intellect as well as your emotions. If you think faith requires turning your back on truth and intellectual honesty, then Finding Faith is one book you really ought to read. With logic, passion, and even-handedness that the thinking person will appreciate, this book helps you face your obstacles to faith by focusing not on what to believe, but on how to believe. Whether you want to strengthen the faith you have, renew the faith you lost, or discover faith for the first time, Finding Faith can coach, inspire, encourage, and guide you, and help you discover more in life than you'd ever imagined or hoped for.
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 Beyond Religion written by Dalai Lama XIV Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2011 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beyond Religion" is a stirring call to move beyond religion for the guidance to improve human life on individual, community, and global levels--including a guided meditation practice for cultivating key human values.
Download or read book Why We Believe in God s written by J. Anderson Thomson and published by Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA). This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking volume, J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., MD, with Clare Aukofer, offers a succinct yet comprehensive study of how and why the human mind generates religious belief. Dr. Thomson, a highly respected practicing psychiatrist with credentials in forensic psychiatry and evolutionary psychology, methodically investigates the components and causes of religious belief in the same way any scientist would investigate the movement of astronomical bodies or the evolution of life over time—that is, as a purely natural phenomenon. Providing compelling evidence from psychology, the cognitive neurosciences, and related fields, he, with Ms. Aukofer, presents an easily accessible and exceptionally convincing case that god(s) were created by man—not vice versa. With this slim volume, Dr. Thomson establishes himself as a must-read thinker and leading voice on the primacy of reason and science over superstition and religion.
Download or read book Surviving Religion 101 written by Michael J. Kruger and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I can't imagine a college student—skeptic, doubter, Christian, struggler—who wouldn't benefit from this book." —Kevin DeYoung For many young adults, the college years are an exciting period of selfdiscovery full of new relationships, new independence, and new experiences. Yet college can also be a time of personal testing and intense questioning— especially for Christian students confronted with various challenges to Christianity and the Bible for the first time. Drawing on years of experience as a biblical scholar, Michael Kruger addresses common objections to the Christian faith—the exclusivity of Christianity, Christian intolerance, homosexuality, hell, the problem of evil, science, miracles, and the reliability of the Bible. If you're a student dealing with doubt or wrestling with objections to Christianity from fellow students and professors alike, this book will equip you to engage secular challenges with intellectual honesty, compassion, and confidence—and ultimately graduate college with your faith intact.
Download or read book Intelligent Person s Guide to Christian Ethics written by Alban McCoy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a view that could be described as enlightened orthodoxy, McCoy tackles a wide range of issues, such as: Is there a Christian perspective on the war in Iraq that is not simply a human perspective? Are Christian ethics pumped up or watered down humanist ethics? What is a distinctly Christian view in modern secularized society? Do the Bible and the Natural Law really still have any relevance to the burning moral issues of the day? As scientific progress raises moral issues of dazzling complexity, do traditional attitudes to abortion, euthanasia, in vitro fertilization and human embryology still make any sense? How long should we prolong life? Should we ever assist death? Fr. Alban McCoy is a sure and enlightened guide to these questions.
Download or read book Common Sense Religion written by Gerald Mann and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Intelligent Person s Guide to Understanding Islam and Muslims written by Ikram Hawramani and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-12-28 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Intelligent Person's Guide to Understanding Islām and Muslims is a multidisciplinary study of Islam as it is lived and experienced by Muslims, presenting an alternative way of seeing Islam that dispels the myths popularized by such works as The Crisis of Islam, The Closing of the Muslim Mind and other attempts that leap from theory to practice without taking real-world Muslims into account.
Download or read book Demystifying Islam written by Ali Shehata and published by Dr. Ali Shehata. This book was released on 2007-04 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brimming with references and up-to-date statistics, this edition allows the reader to quickly and intelligently become familiar with the precepts upon which Islam stands, and to decide whether what is presented by the media is representative or biased. (World Religions)
