A Spiritual Hypothesis

A Spiritual Hypothesis PDF Author: Daniel Punzak
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1524652369
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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Book Description
Traditional Western religion explains that each human has a spiritual aspect called a soul. However, several passages in the Bible allude to humans having a soul and a spirit. Dan has explored this idea and found numerous modern psychological findings that support this notion. Shamanism and some Eastern religious concepts also support this idea. Diverse concepts such as creativity and mental illness can be explained by the idea that two spiritual forms are in each human.

A Spiritual Hypothesis

A Spiritual Hypothesis PDF Author: Daniel Punzak
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1524652369
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 566

Get Book Here

Book Description
Traditional Western religion explains that each human has a spiritual aspect called a soul. However, several passages in the Bible allude to humans having a soul and a spirit. Dan has explored this idea and found numerous modern psychological findings that support this notion. Shamanism and some Eastern religious concepts also support this idea. Diverse concepts such as creativity and mental illness can be explained by the idea that two spiritual forms are in each human.

God: The Failed Hypothesis

God: The Failed Hypothesis PDF Author: Victor J. Stenger
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 161592003X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have been largely confined to philosophy and theology, while science has sat on the sidelines. Despite the fact that science has revolutionized every aspect of human life and greatly clarified our understanding of the world, somehow the notion has arisen that it has nothing to say about the possibility of a supreme being, which much of humanity worships as the source of all reality. This book contends that, if God exists, some evidence for this existence should be detectable by scientific means, especially considering the central role that God is alleged to play in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans. Treating the traditional God concept, as conventionally presented in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, like any other scientific hypothesis, physicist Stenger examines all of the claims made for God's existence. He considers the latest Intelligent Design arguments as evidence of God's influence in biology. He looks at human behavior for evidence of immaterial souls and the possible effects of prayer. He discusses the findings of physics and astronomy in weighing the suggestions that the universe is the work of a creator and that humans are God's special creation. After evaluating all the scientific evidence, Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God. This paperback edition of the New York Times bestselling hardcover edition contains a new foreword by Christopher Hitchens and a postscript by the author in which he responds to reviewers' criticisms of the original edition.

Spiritual Science

Spiritual Science PDF Author: Steve Taylor
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1786781921
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
A mindfulness expert whose work has been hailed by Eckhart Tolle as “an important contribution to the shift in consciousness” offers a new vision of reality—one that is compatible with modern science and ancient spirituality. “With elegance and lucidity, Steve Taylor explains why spiritual science is the only hope for humanity.” —Deepak Chopra It is often assumed that there are two ways of interpreting the world: a rational scientific way, or an irrational religious way. Mindfulness expert, Steve Taylor, shows that there is a third possibility—a spiritual, or “panspiritist”, view of reality that transcends both conventional science and religion, recognizes spirit or consciousness as fundamental, and answers many of the riddles that neither can explain. Here, Taylor puts forward the evidence for a spiritual view of reality and examines the development and consequences of the materialist model. Drawing on the insights of philosophers, physicists, mystics, as well as spiritual traditions and indigenous cultures, he also systematically shows how a ‘panspiritist’ view can explain many puzzling aspects of science and the world such as: • human consciousness • altruism • near-death experiences • telepathy and pre-cognition • quantum physics • the placebo effect • neuroplasticity A compelling argument for a new vision of reality, Spiritual Science offers a bright vision of the world as sacred and interconnected, and of human life as meaningful and purposeful.

Spirit, Mind, & Brain

Spirit, Mind, & Brain PDF Author: Mortimer Ostow
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231139004
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Preeminent psychoanalyst Mortimer Ostow believes that early childhood emotional attachments form the cognitive underpinnings of spiritual experience and religious motivation. His hypothesis, which is verifiable, relies on psychological and neurobiological evidence but is respectful of the human need for spiritual value. Ostow begins by classifying the three parts of the spiritual experience: awe, Spirituality proper, and mysticism. After he pinpoints the psychological origins of these feelings in infancy, he discusses the foundations of religious sentiment and practice and the brain processes associated with spiritual experience. He then focuses on spirituality's relationship to mood regulation, and the role of negative spirituality in fostering religious fundamentalism and demonic possession. Ostow concludes with an analysis of an essay by the psychoanalyst Donald M. Marcus, who recounts his own spiritual experience during a Native American-style "vision quest" in the woods. Marcus's account demonstrates the constructive potential of spirituality and the way in which spirituality retrieves and recapitulates feelings of attachment to the mother. Persuasively and brilliantly argued, Spirit, Mind, and Brain brings the disciplines of religion, behavorial neuroscience, and philosophy to bear on a groundbreaking new method for understanding religious ritual and belief.

The Spiritual Quest

The Spiritual Quest PDF Author: Robert M. Torrance
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520920163
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Robert Torrance's wide-ranging, innovative study argues that the spiritual quest is rooted in our biological, psychological, linguistic, and social nature. The quest is not, as most have believed, a rare mystical experience, but a frequent expression of our most basic human impulses. Shaman and scientist, medium and poet, prophet and philosopher, all venture forth in quest of visionary truths to transform and renew the world. Yet Torrance is not trying to reduce the quest to an "archetype" or "monomyth." Instead, he presents the full diversity of the quest in the myths and religious practices of tribal peoples throughout the world, from Oceania to India, Africa, Siberia, and especially the Americas. In theorizing about the quest, Torrance draws on thinkers as diverse as Bergson and Piaget, van Gennep and Turner, Pierce and Popper, Freud, Darwin, and Chomsky. This is a book that will expand our knowledge—and awareness—of a fundamental human activity in all its fascinating complexity.

The Biophilia Hypothesis

The Biophilia Hypothesis PDF Author: Stephen R. Kellert
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 9781559631471
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Biophilia" is the term coined by Edward O. Wilson to describe what he believes is humanity's innate affinity for the natural world. In his landmark book Biophilia, he examined how our tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes might be a biologically based need, integral to our development as individuals and as a species. That idea has caught the imagination of diverse thinkers. The Biophilia Hypothesis brings together the views of some of the most creative scientists of our time, each attempting to amplify and refine the concept of biophilia. The variety of perspectives -- psychological, biological, cultural, symbolic, and aesthetic -- frame the theoretical issues by presenting empirical evidence that supports or refutes the hypothesis. Numerous examples illustrate the idea that biophilia and its converse, biophobia, have a genetic component: fear, and even full-blown phobias of snakes and spiders are quick to develop with very little negative reinforcement, while more threatening modern artifacts -- knives, guns, automobiles -- rarely elicit such a response people find trees that are climbable and have a broad, umbrella-like canopy more attractive than trees without these characteristics people would rather look at water, green vegetation, or flowers than built structures of glass and concrete The biophilia hypothesis, if substantiated, provides a powerful argument for the conservation of biological diversity. More important, it implies serious consequences for our well-being as society becomes further estranged from the natural world. Relentless environmental destruction could have a significant impact on our quality of life, not just materially but psychologically and even spiritually.

The Spiritual Universe

The Spiritual Universe PDF Author: Fred Alan Wolf
Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
ISBN: 1609255429
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
From a National Book Award winner, “methodical and clear . . . provides physics-phobics a wide bridge to understanding some often arcane material” (Booklist). Why do we believe in the soul? Does it actually exist? If so, what is it? Does it differ from the self? Does it survive the body after death? In The Spiritual Universe, Fred Alan Wolf brings the most modern perspective of quantum physics to the most ancient questions of religion and philosophy. Taking the reader on a fascinating tour of both Western and Eastern thought, Wolf explains the differing view of the soul in the works of Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas, the ancient Egyptian’s belief in the nine forms of the soul, the Qabalistic idea of the soul acting in secret to bring spiritual order to a chaotic universe of matter and energy, and the Buddhist vision of a “nonsoul.” Wolf then mounts a defense of the soul against its modern critics who see it as nothing more than the physical body. “One of the few pathfinders who have discovered the versatility and potency of the new quantum paradigm based on consciousness.” —Amit Goswami, Professor of Physics and author of The Self-Aware Universe “The questions are exhilarating and the conclusions are properly mysterious and profoundly inconclusive . . . you’ll love the spirited journey.” —Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life “Wolf is a new Thales for a new physics of the soul; his book will blow your mind and quicken your spirit.” —Michael Grosso, Ph.D., author of The Millennium Myth and Frontiers of the Soul

Dreams, Consciousness, Spirit

Dreams, Consciousness, Spirit PDF Author: Ernest Lawrence Rossi
Publisher: Zeig Tucker & Theisen Publishers
ISBN: 9781891944994
Category : Cognition
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Rev. ed. of: Dreams and the growth of personality. 2nd ed. c1985.

The Spiritual Magazine

The Spiritual Magazine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Spiritualism
Languages : en
Pages : 1156

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Book Description


Other Worlds

Other Worlds PDF Author: Christopher G. White
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674984293
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Christopher White points to ways that both spiritual practices and scientific speculation about multiverses and invisible dimensions are efforts to peer into the hidden elements and even existential meaning of the universe. Creatively appropriated, these ideas can restore a spiritual sense that the world is greater than anything our eyes can see.