Download or read book Why We Need Religion written by Stephen T. Asma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder and the sublime--we can feel the sacred depths of nature--but there are many forms of human suffering and vulnerability that are beyond the reach of help from science. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike secular authors who praise religion's ethical and civilizing function, Asma argues that its core value lies in its emotionally therapeutic power. No theorist of religion has failed to notice the importance of emotions in spiritual and ritual life, but truly systematic research has only recently delivered concrete data on the neurology, psychology, and anthropology of the emotional systems. This very recent "affective turn" has begun to map out a powerful territory of embodied cognition. Why We Need Religion incorporates new data from these affective sciences into the philosophy of religion. It goes on to describe the way in which religion manages those systems--rage, play, lust, care, grief, and so on. Finally, it argues that religion is still the best cultural apparatus for doing this adaptive work. In short, the book is a Darwinian defense of religious emotions and the cultural systems that manage them.

Download or read book Religions and Extraterrestrial Life written by David A. Weintraub and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-16 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the twenty-first century, the debate about life on other worlds is quickly changing from the realm of speculation to the domain of hard science. Within a few years, as a consequence of the rapid discovery by astronomers of planets around other stars, astronomers very likely will have discovered clear evidence of life beyond the Earth. Such a discovery of extraterrestrial life will change everything. Knowing the answer as to whether humanity has company in the universe will trigger one of the greatest intellectual revolutions in history, not the least of which will be a challenge for at least some terrestrial religions. Which religions will handle the discovery of extraterrestrial life with ease and which will struggle to assimilate this new knowledge about our place in the universe? Some religions as currently practiced appear to only be viable on Earth. Other religions could be practiced on distant worlds but nevertheless identify both Earth as a place and humankind as a species of singular spiritual religious importance, while some religions could be practiced equally well anywhere in the universe by any sentient beings. Weintraub guides readers on an invigorating tour of the world’s most widely practiced religions. It reveals what, if anything, each religion has to say about the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists and how, or if, a particular religion would work on other planets in distant parts of the universe.

Download or read book Faith Versus Fact written by Jerry A. Coyne and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A superbly argued book.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion The New York Times bestselling author of Why Evolution is True explains why any attempt to make religion compatible with science is doomed to fail In this provocative book, evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne lays out in clear, dispassionate detail why the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion—including faith, dogma, and revelation—leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions. Coyne is responding to a national climate in which more than half of Americans don’t believe in evolution, members of Congress deny global warming, and long-conquered childhood diseases are reappearing because of religious objections to inoculation, and he warns that religious prejudices in politics, education, medicine, and social policy are on the rise. Extending the bestselling works of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, he demolishes the claims of religion to provide verifiable “truth” by subjecting those claims to the same tests we use to establish truth in science. Coyne irrefutably demonstrates the grave harm—to individuals and to our planet—in mistaking faith for fact in making the most important decisions about the world we live in. Praise for Faith Versus Fact: “A profound and lovely book . . . showing that the honest doubts of science are better . . . than the false certainties of religion.” —Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith

Download or read book Some Facts of Religion and of Life written by and published by . This book was released on 1877 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Religion and Living Arrangements Around the World written by Stephanie Kramer and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book SOME FACTS OF RELIGION OF LI written by John 1823-1886 Tulloch and published by Wentworth Press. This book was released on 2016-08-29 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book Some Facts of Religion and of Life written by John Tulloch and published by . This book was released on 1877 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book God Is Not Great written by Christopher Hitchens and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Hitchens, described in the London Observer as “one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time” takes on his biggest subject yet–the increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris’s recent bestseller, The End Of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.

Download or read book What is Hinduism written by Mahatma Gandhi and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of Gandhiji s articles drawn mainly from his contributions to young india, the Harijan and the Navjivan on Hinduism. Written on different occassions, these articles present a picture of hindu dharma I all its richness, comprehensiveness and sensitivity to the existential delimmas of human existence.

Download or read book The Catholic Encyclopedia written by Charles George Herbermann and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 990 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Grace written by Robert D. Putnam and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on three national surveys on religion, as well as research conducted by congregations across the United States, to examine the profound impact it has had on American life and how religious attitudes have changed in recent decades.

Download or read book North African Women in France written by Caitlin Killian and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sociological study of the cultural choices and identity negotiation of North African women immigrants in France.

Download or read book Battling the Gods written by Tim Whitmarsh and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.

Download or read book For God s Sake written by Antony Loewenstein and published by Macmillan Publishers Aus.. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

Download or read book Religious Literacy written by Stephen Prothero and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is one of the most religious places on earth, but it is also a nation of shocking religious illiteracy. Only 10 percent of American teenagers can name all five major world religions and 15 percent cannot name any. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible holds the answers to all or most of life's basic questions, yet only half of American adults can name even one of the four gospels and most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible. Despite this lack of basic knowledge, politicians and pundits continue to root public policy arguments in religious rhetoric whose meanings are missed—or misinterpreted—by the vast majority of Americans. "We have a major civic problem on our hands," says religion scholar Stephen Prothero. He makes the provocative case that to remedy this problem, we should return to teaching religion in the public schools. Alongside "reading, writing, and arithmetic," religion ought to become the "Fourth R" of American education. Many believe that America's descent into religious illiteracy was the doing of activist judges and secularists hell-bent on banishing religion from the public square. Prothero reveals that this is a profound misunderstanding. "In one of the great ironies of American religious history," Prothero writes, "it was the nation's most fervent people of faith who steered us down the road to religious illiteracy. Just how that happened is one of the stories this book has to tell." Prothero avoids the trap of religious relativism by addressing both the core tenets of the world's major religions and the real differences among them. Complete with a dictionary of the key beliefs, characters, and stories of Christianity, Islam, and other religions, Religious Literacy reveals what every American needs to know in order to confront the domestic and foreign challenges facing this country today.

Download or read book What Is Life All About written by Alan P. Gill and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2009-07-31 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What Is Life All About? Is life: A Grand Conspiracy? A Marvelous Mystery? An Incredible Accident? Or Something Else? The surprise is that you can know the truth about life and be 100% confident in that knowledge. You will know what is on the other side of death. Amazingly, your success or failure in life has to do with your attitude. The person with the wrong attitude can read, see, hear the truth and deny it vehemently, while the person with right attitude will understand, appreciate and believe the truth. Life is a perfect and difficult test. The process of life itself sorts out good from evil, right from wrong and you will succeed or fail depending on your attitude. The book defines the attitude you need to succeed and provides evidence and examples to convince. What is life really all about? It may be true that most people do not care, but what is the reason for not caring? Generally, it is because people DOUBT ANYONE REALLY KNOWS, and thus why should anyone care. In addition, the world brings great confusion to this subject. There are scams and frauds around every corner, and even honest people push the limits of the truth with exaggeration which is really a lie. Greed, selfishness, covetousness, envy, and power are behind a lot of the deceit. The wonder of heaven will provide infinitely more than people could ever achieve on earth, but people want everything NOW and deceit is a frequent companion to achieving earthly desires. There are 45 chapters in the book, What Is Life All About and then some extensive helpful appendices another 163 pages. The single most influential deceit is in the area of religion. The single most prominent reason for being an atheist or agnostic is religion. The past 2000 years of religious history includes unspeakable cruelty, wars, terrorism, indoctrination, lies and deception and this rightly leads to opposition, but also strangely to acceptance/indifference/excuses by others. The critical missing fact is that God had nothing to do with these religions but abhors them. What a pathetic assumption to blame God. The truth about God and these religious groups could quickly clarify the situation. Chapter 16 is a chapter that begins to sort out HOW all this religious mess occurred. Here is a partial outline for chapter 16: 16.1 What Is Seriously Wrong with Judaism? 16.2 What Is Seriously Wrong with Roman Catholicism? 16.3 What Is Seriously Wrong with Protestant Groups? 16.4 What Is Seriously Wrong with Islam? 16.5 What Is Seriously Wrong with Mormonism? 16.6 What Is Seriously Wrong with the Jehovahs Witnesses? 16.7 What Is Seriously Wrong with Atheism/Agnosticism? Seriously Wrong means there is NO eternal value in these religions. These belief systems were the fabrication of men and/or women and did NOT come from God. The evidence is overwhelming and deceit runs through these religions like vultures going through a carcass. You do not need a forensic analysis, but you can do a complete autopsy if you wish. The damaging evidence regarding these groups is clearly seen and very logical and understandable from the book. This is because AS YOU UNDERSTAND GOD (a significant subject in the book) you do not need to go very far into these beliefs to see huge problems. One of the attitudes you need is a LOVE OF THE TRUTH more than the love of what you currently believe. You can understand God, His purpose, His plan inasmuch as He has revealed Himself. Incredibly, one major obstacle to overcome will be the MAGNITUDE OF THE DECEIT. Lies on top of lies often for many centuries define todays religions. Religion has become mans idea of God and there is no consistency, just random unrelated doctrines. The truth is infinitely different with everything perfectly connected to a single purpose. Ultimately, your success or failure in life is simply a matter of where you place your trust. Is your trust in God or is it in men/women, who say they are telling you

Download or read book Religion s Relationship to Happiness Civic Engagement and Health Around the World written by Dalia Fahmy and published by . This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: