Download or read book Everything I Believed written by Jennifer Suzanne and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the outside, it seems like Sam Davis has it all: a successful actress, singer, and songwriter, she’s earned the respect and adoration of Hollywood and legions of fans. But her parents’ recent deaths have left her devastated and with the responsibility of raising her elevenyear-old brother. Not to mention the return of her childhood love, who’s come back to town intent on picking up where they left off. While her career is taking off, it appears as if Sam’s personal life is falling apart. Danny Gallo, famous movie star, director, and producer - charming and gallant - sweeps Sam off her feet and teaches her about love, trust, and faith. But trusting Danny with her tragic past is not easy for Sam, and she can’t help but push him away. Leaning on her friends, Sam tries to heal her heart. But in the face of such unspeakable grief and loss, will Sam be able to let her guard down and finally trust again? www.jennifersuzanne.ca

Download or read book Everything I Thought I Knew written by Shannon Takaoka and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A teenage girl wonders if she's inherited more than just a heart from her donor in this compulsively readable debut. Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste. Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves--which is strange, because she wasn't interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn't hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.) And that's not all that's strange. There's also the vivid recurring nightmare about crashing a motorcycle in a tunnel and memories of people and places she doesn't recognize. Is there something wrong with her head now, too, or is there another explanation for what she's experiencing? As she searches for answers, and as her attraction to Kai intensifies, what she learns will lead her to question everything she thought she knew--about life, death, love, identity, and the true nature of reality.

Download or read book Lies We Believe About God written by Wm. Paul Young and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the bestselling novel The Shack and the New York Times bestsellers Cross Roads and Eve comes a compelling, conversational exploration of twenty-eight assumptions about God—assumptions that just might be keeping us from experiencing His unconditional, all-encompassing love. In his wildly popular novels, Wm. Paul Young portrayed the Triune God in ways that challenged our thinking—sometimes upending long-held beliefs, but always centered in the eternal, all-encompassing nature of God’s love. Now, in Wm. Paul Young’s first nonfiction book, he invites us to revisit our assumptions about God—this time using the Bible, theological discussion, and personal anecdotes. Paul encourages us to think through beliefs we’ve presumed to be true and consider whether some might actually be false. Expounding on the compassion fans felt from the “Papa” portrayed in The Shack—now a major film starring Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer—Paul encourages you to think anew about important issues including sin, religion, hell, politics, identity, creation, human rights, and helping us discover God’s deep and abiding love.

Download or read book Everything You Believe Is Wrong written by William M. Briggs and published by . This book was released on 2021-12 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you are an Expert, professional, bureaucrat, teacher, professor, Democrat or Republican, liberal, progressive or conservative, consider yourself in any way in the educated classes, the odds are high that everything you believe is wrong. Not everything. Not simple things. Only the most important things. If you are in the majority, then a great deal of what you hold true about the world and of life is false. Here is a small sample of things that majority of educated believe are false, but which are instead true: Science cannot answer every question put to it; It is not always right to correct a wrong; There is no wisdom in crowds; A consensus among elite academics does not prove the belief of the elite academics is true; That you are offended is irrelevant to whether a proposition is true or false; Defining yourself as your sexual desire is nonsensical; Voting does not make the majority position right and the minority position wrong; Voting is a leading cause of discord; Democracy is rarely to be desired; You cannot choose to believe you do not have free will; God exists. These are only some of the ideas and arguments explored in this book. The majority, and that means likely you, are wrong about all of them. This is no idle claim. It will be proved chapter by chapter. Every bad or invalid or unsound argument contains a fallacy or mistake in thinking. Nobody knows the complete list of ways thought can go wrong, and it has even been surmised such a list is endless. History supports this contention. There is ample reason to believe the human race is congenitally insane. Some mistakes are more common than others. Every age has its own favorite forays into fiction, driven by fashion, fad, and fantasy, all of which are enforced by the culture's self-appointed Watchers. The balance of truth versus error shifts in time, yet the current age is more eager than average to ferret away any shiny object it finds and call it precious. Fallacies therefore have tremendous inertia. Some mental misconstructions are permanent fixtures. I have evocative and memorable nicknames, at least for speakers of English, of the most popular and important fallacies of our day. We step through each, showing how it is false. Here are just a few of our age's favorite fallacies: Controversial Fallacy, Non-Fallacy Fallacy, Appeal to Non-Authority, So Yer's Old Man, Bluff & Bluster Fallacy, You Bigot Fallacy, Hate Speech Fallacy, Bureaucrat Fallacy, One True Spartacus Fallacy, Wisdom of Crowds Fallacy, I Can't See Another Way Fallacy; many, many others, including the ever-popular Meta Fallacy. This is a fallacy that says a thing is true because it is a fallacy. Strange as it seems, it is most convincing. More at https: //wmbriggs.com

Download or read book A Three Dog Life written by Abigail Thomas and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Abigail Thomas shares the story of how she started a new life after an accident left her husband brain damaged and institutionalized.

Download or read book God Has a Reason for Everything written by Chery Manning and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable memoir of a young love, a devastating loss, and the power of miracles . . . It’s 1989, and Jason and Chery have been dating for almost nine months in Phoenix, Arizona. She’s looking forward to a reunion with some friends from back home in Alaska when Jason’s friend invites them to go three-wheeling. She’s not excited about the idea, but gives in. Then, on the last run of the day, there is a terrible accident. The accident happens forty-five minutes away from the nearest town—and cell phones don’t exist. Help may not get there in time. But help comes in a most miraculous way. One will not make it. The other is put into a coma. There will be an intense and agonizing recovery. The recovery will have to be made in phases decided by the doctors. They have to be sure the information can be handled and accepted without giving up the fight to survive. As time progresses, God always seems to be there. More miraculous events transpire to get the results He’s looking for. The one who survives never understands the events that happened that day—until much later. Looking back, God has a reason for everything. We never fully understand our purpose in life, but sometimes it is made known. This is a true story of how miracles do happen, on a daily basis. You just have to listen to God’s voice to understand. . . .

Download or read book Don t Believe Everything You Think written by Thubten Chodron and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2013-01-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It can be hard for those of us living in the twenty-first century to see how fourteenth-century Buddhist teachings still apply. When you’re trying to figure out which cell phone plan to buy or brooding about something someone wrote about you on Facebook, lines like “While the enemy of your own anger is unsubdued, though you conquer external foes, they will only increase” can seem a little obscure. Thubten Chodron’s illuminating explication of Togmay Zangpo’s revered text, The Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas, doesn’t just explain its profound meaning; in dozens of passages she lets her students and colleagues share first-person stories of the ways that its teachings have changed their lives. Some bear witness to dramatic transformations—making friends with an enemy prisoner-of-war, finding peace after the murder of a loved one—while others tell of smaller lessons, like waiting for something to happen or coping with a minor injury.

Download or read book Don t Believe Everything You Feel written by Robert L. Leahy and published by New Harbinger Publications. This book was released on 2020-07-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find lasting freedom from difficult emotions with skills grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and emotional schema therapy. If you struggle with difficult emotions, you should know that you aren’t alone. Many people feel sad, worried, or stressed out—whether as a result of depression, anxiety, or simply dealing with the common struggles of daily life. Emotions are a natural and healthy part of being human. It’s how we cope with these difficult emotions that reveal our true capacity for happiness, love, and joy. Don’t Believe Everything You Feel offers a groundbreaking approach blending CBT and emotional schema therapy to help you explore your own deeply held personal beliefs about emotions, determine if these beliefs are helpful or harmful, and find the motivation to adopt alternative, healthier coping strategies. Each chapter contains exercises such as self-assessment, expressive writing, or guided questioning to help you manage your emotions more productively. There’s no such thing as a “bad,” emotion. But if you’re experiencing sadness, anger, or anxiety most of the time, you need to find balance. This book will show you how to better cope with your emotions and live a full, meaningful life.

Download or read book The Truth Is What You Believe written by Warren Brewin and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2018-09-30 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 550 BC, or thereabouts, Buddha stated “I am the sum total of everything I thought”. This was divine wisdom that is inspiration for the book’s title; The Truth is what YOU Believe. Everything you think is based on a process of thought reaching a conclusion that becomes exactly what you are, as you traverse the complexities and opportunities of your life. The Truth of Religion reviews the position of the major Religions and influences they have in societies globally today, and how technological/social giants like Google, Facebook and YouTube threaten the loyalty to religion, and the values that came with those belief systems. The Truth of Sport examines whether money and greed have overtaken human integrity. Does the end justify the means today? The original endeavour of competitive sport started with the purest of ideologies in the Olympics rebirth in Greece in 1896 and is in stark contrast to the drug ridden corrupt fiasco that is prevalent in many professional sports today. Discover what makes top athletes really tick. If there are no rules there is no discernible truth. The section on the Truth of Business looks at how creating credibility in every moment of a company’s existence is the key ingredient to success and importantly how the leader and structure play a part. Commitment to strong ideals is paramount. Weak people tend to accept, and are happy to exist in a world of lies, as it is often easier and cheaper to delude yourself than confront reality head on. How people from all walks of life deal with the adversity of relationship failure and how absolutely critical the truth is, in all your relationships, is uncovered in its barest form in the Truth of Relationships. After the first betrayal, you have nothing. Living a true life means you will always have your integrity, a value beyond compare.

Download or read book What I Believe written by Hans Küng and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hans Kung is one of the most celebrated theologians of the present day. His audience, which is strong within his own Roman Catholic Church, is equally solid among Christians of other denominations, among those outside the churches and indeed among those at the frontiers of organised religion. From the start, he has been a rebel, being Swiss and a lover of personal freedom. Many of his books such as Infallible? and On Being a Christian have rocked the Papal boat. Now after publishing two magnificent and acclaimed volumes of memoirs, Kung has written a much shorter and more personal book to explain his own beliefs. If one sets aside all scientific knowledge and learning, all formal theological language and the skilful construction of theories, what remains as the core of faith? What do we need for our lives? What is indispensable to us? Kung writes of trust in life, joy in life and suffering in life and in so doing gives us a summa of his own faith - and life.

Download or read book The Language of God written by Francis Collins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists, working at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God. How does he reconcile the seemingly unreconcilable? In THE LANGUAGE OF GOD he explains his own journey from atheism to faith, and then takes the reader on a stunning tour of modern science to show that physics, chemistry and biology -- indeed, reason itself -- are not incompatible with belief. His book is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of all: why are we here? How did we get here? And what does life mean?

Download or read book Everything Happens for a Reason written by Kate Bowler and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi “Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before. Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live. Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason “I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising

Download or read book The Believing Brain written by Michael Shermer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths. Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.

Download or read book You ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey written by Amber Ruffin and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND INDIE NEXT PICK* Writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers Amber Ruffin writes with her sister Lacey Lamar with humor and heart to share absurd anecdotes about everyday experiences of racism. Now a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers and host of The Amber Ruffin Show, Amber Ruffin lives in New York, where she is no one's First Black Friend and everyone is, as she puts it, "stark raving normal." But Amber's sister Lacey? She's still living in their home state of Nebraska, and trust us, you'll never believe what happened to Lacey. From racist donut shops to strangers putting their whole hand in her hair, from being mistaken for a prostitute to being mistaken for Harriet Tubman, Lacey is a lightning rod for hilariously ridiculous yet all-too-real anecdotes. She's the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, petite, and Black that apparently makes people think "I can say whatever I want to this woman." And now, Amber and Lacey share these entertainingly horrifying stories through their laugh-out-loud sisterly banter. Painfully relatable or shockingly eye-opening (depending on how often you have personally been followed by security at department stores), this book tackles modern-day racism with the perfect balance of levity and gravity.

Download or read book What We Believe but Cannot Prove written by John Brockman and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than one hundred of the world's leading thinkers write about things they believe in, despite the absence of concrete proof Scientific theory, more often than not, is born of bold assumption, disparate bits of unconnected evidence, and educated leaps of faith. Some of the most potent beliefs among brilliant minds are based on supposition alone -- yet that is enough to push those minds toward making the theory viable. Eminent cultural impresario, editor, and publisher of Edge (www.edge.org), John Brockman asked a group of leading scientists and thinkers to answer the question: What do you believe to be true even though you cannot prove it? This book brings together the very best answers from the most distinguished contributors. Thought-provoking and hugely compelling, this collection of bite-size thought-experiments is a fascinating insight into the instinctive beliefs of some of the most brilliant minds today.

Download or read book Tomorrowland written by Steven Kotler and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of Kotler's previously published writings, updated, on pivotal and controversial advances in science and technology.--

Download or read book Why We Believe written by Agustin Fuentes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging argument by a renowned anthropologist that the capacity to believe is what makes us human Why are so many humans religious? Why do we daydream, imagine, and hope? Philosophers, theologians, social scientists, and historians have offered explanations for centuries, but their accounts often ignore or even avoid human evolution. Evolutionary scientists answer with proposals for why ritual, religion, and faith make sense as adaptations to past challenges or as by-products of our hyper-complex cognitive capacities. But what if the focus on religion is too narrow? Renowned anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that the capacity to be religious is actually a small part of a larger and deeper human capacity to believe. Why believe in religion, economies, love? A fascinating intervention into some of the most common misconceptions about human nature, this book employs evolutionary, neurobiological, and anthropological evidence to argue that belief—the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea—is central to the human way of being in the world.