Atheist in the Attic

Atheist in the Attic PDF Author: Samuel R. Delany
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 162963462X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
The title novella, “The Atheist in the Attic,” appearing here in book form for the first time, is a suspenseful and vivid historical narrative, recreating the top-secret meeting between the mathematical genius Leibniz and the philosopher Spinoza caught between the horrors of the cannibalistic Dutch Rampjaar and the brilliant “big bang” of the Enlightenment. Plus: equal parts history, confession, complaint, gossip, and personal triumph, Delany’s “Racism and Science Fiction” combines scholarly research and personal experience in the unique true story of the first major African American author in the genre. And featuring: a bibliography, an author biography, and our candid, uncompromising, and customary Outspoken Interview.

Atheist in the Attic

Atheist in the Attic PDF Author: Samuel R. Delany
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 162963462X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 133

Get Book Here

Book Description
The title novella, “The Atheist in the Attic,” appearing here in book form for the first time, is a suspenseful and vivid historical narrative, recreating the top-secret meeting between the mathematical genius Leibniz and the philosopher Spinoza caught between the horrors of the cannibalistic Dutch Rampjaar and the brilliant “big bang” of the Enlightenment. Plus: equal parts history, confession, complaint, gossip, and personal triumph, Delany’s “Racism and Science Fiction” combines scholarly research and personal experience in the unique true story of the first major African American author in the genre. And featuring: a bibliography, an author biography, and our candid, uncompromising, and customary Outspoken Interview.

God's Horse and The Atheists' School

God's Horse and The Atheists' School PDF Author: Wilhelm Dichter
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810127938
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE God's Horse (1996) and The Atheists' School (1999), Wilhelm Dichter's novelistic memoirs, are both striking for their spare, precise prose and for the fullness with which they inhabit the perspectives of, respectively, a young boy trying to survive the Holocaust in hiding and an adolescent in the turbulent world of post-war Poland. The books openly address a rarely documented phenomenon - a Jew who, having escaped death in Nazi-occupied Poland, ascends into the upper echelons of Polish society as a committed Communist. After the war, the narrator becomes the stepson of a rising star in the petroleum ministry. He tries to gain acceptance by becoming a propagandist, but he can't help wondering if those who constantly warn of a renewal of Jewish persecution may be right.

Religion for Atheists

Religion for Atheists PDF Author: Alain De Botton
Publisher: Signal
ISBN: 0771025998
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
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.

The Whalestoe Letters

The Whalestoe Letters PDF Author: Mark Z. Danielewski
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0375714413
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Lièvre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life. Beautiful, heartfelt, and tragic, this correspondence reveals the powerful and deeply moving relationship between a brilliant though mentally ill mother and the precocious, gifted young son she never ceases to love. Originally contained within the monumental House of Leaves, this collection stands alone as a stunning portrait of mother and child. It is presented here along with a foreword by Walden D. Wyhrta and eleven previously unavailable letters.

Why I am an Atheist

Why I am an Atheist PDF Author: Bhagat Singh
Publisher: Sristhi Publishers & Distributors
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description
A discussion with a friend soon turned into a matter of self-assessment, leading to this discourse on why Bhagat Singh chose to be an atheist. Even in the face of death at a very young age, with uncanny observations and sharp questions, he forces us to re-think our foundations to faith in god.

The Most Reluctant Convert

The Most Reluctant Convert PDF Author: David C. Downing
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666718939
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In his teens, a young man wrote, “I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them.” After serving in the trenches of WW1, the same young man said, “I never sank so low as to pray.” To a religious friend, he wrote impatiently, “You can’t start with God. I don’t accept God!” This young man was C. S. Lewis, the “foul-mouthed atheist” who would become one of the most eloquent Christian writers of the twentieth century. David C. Downing offers a unique look at Lewis’s personal journey to faith and the profound influence it had on his life as a writer and eventual follower of Christ. This is the first book to focus on the period from Lewis’s childhood to his early thirties, a tumultuous journey of spiritual and intellectual exploration. It was not despite this journey but precisely because of it that Lewis understood the search for life’s meaning so well.

The Footprints of God

The Footprints of God PDF Author: Greg Iles
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743454148
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
In this "New York Times" bestseller, Iles probes the terrifying possibility that the next phase of human evolution may not be human at all. Alarming, believable, and utterly consuming.--Dan Brown. Now available in a tall Premium Edition. Reissue.

Life Driven Purpose

Life Driven Purpose PDF Author: Dan Barker
Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)
ISBN: 1939578248
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Every thinking person wants to lead a life of meaning and purpose. For thousands of years, holy books have told us that such a life is available only through obedience and submission to some higher power. Today, the faithful keep popular devotionals and tracts within easy reach on bedside tables and mobile devices, all communicating this common message: "Life is meaningless without God." In this volume, former pastor Dan Barker eloquently, powerfully, and rationally upends this long-held belief. Offering words of enrichment, emancipation, and inspiration, he reminds us how millions of atheists lead happy, loving, moral, and purpose-filled lives. Practicing what he preaches, he also demonstrates through his own personal journey that life is valuable for its own sake—that meaning and purpose come not from above, but from within.

The Lucky Strike

The Lucky Strike PDF Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 145877516X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
This stimulating little chapbook would work very well as a basis for classroom debate on speculative fiction, history, or the notion of free will. - Publishers Weekly The foremost writer of literary utopias.' - Time magazine Its no coincidence that one of our most visionary science fiction writers is also a profoundly good nature writer.' ...

Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians

Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians PDF Author: Marcello Pera
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594035644
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The intellectual and political elite of the West is nowadays taking for granted that religion, in particular Christianity, is a cultural vestige, a primitive form of knowledge, a consolation for the poor minded, an obstacle to coexistence. In all influential environments, the widespread watchword is “We are all secular” or “We are all post-religious.” As a consequence, we are told that states must be independent of religious creed, politics must take a neutral stance regarding religious values, and societies must hold together without any reference to religious bonds. Liberalism, which in some form or another is the prevailing view in the West, is considered to be “free-standing,” and the Western, liberal, open society is taken to be “self-sufficient.” Not only is anti-Christian secularism wrong, it is also risky. It's wrong because the very ideas on which liberal societies are based and in terms of which they can be justified—the concept of the dignity of the human person, the moral priority of the individual, the view that man is a “crooked timber” inclined to prevarication, the limited confidence in the power of the state to render him virtuous—are typical Christian or, more precisely, Judeo-Christian ideas. Take them away and the open society will collapse. Anti-Christian secularism is risky because it jeopardizes the identity of the West, leaves it with no self-conscience, and deprives people of their sense of belonging. The Founding Fathers of America, as well as major intellectual European figures such as Locke, Kant, and Tocqueville, knew how much our civilization depends on Christianity. Today, American and European culture is shaking the pillars of that civilization. Written from a secular and liberal, but not anti-Christian, point of view, this book explains why the Christian culture is still the best antidote to the crisis and decline of the West. Pera proposes that we should call ourselves Christians if we want to maintain our liberal freedoms, to embark on such projects as the political unification of Europe as well as the special relationship between Europe and America, and to avoid the relativistic trend that affects our public ethics. “The challenges of our particular historical moment”, as Pope Benedict XVI calls them in the Preface to the book, can be faced only if we stress the historical and conceptual link between Christianity and free society.