Author: Kelly K. Monroe
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 9780310219224
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
Kelly Monroe presents forty-two compelling testimonies from faculty members, former students, and orators at Harvard University whose reflections explode the myth that Christian faith cannot survive a rigorous intellectual environment.
Finding God at Harvard
Author: Kelly K. Monroe
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 9780310219224
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
Kelly Monroe presents forty-two compelling testimonies from faculty members, former students, and orators at Harvard University whose reflections explode the myth that Christian faith cannot survive a rigorous intellectual environment.
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 9780310219224
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
Kelly Monroe presents forty-two compelling testimonies from faculty members, former students, and orators at Harvard University whose reflections explode the myth that Christian faith cannot survive a rigorous intellectual environment.
The Search for God at Harvard
Author: Ari L. Goldman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345377060
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 301
Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR In 1985 Ari L. Goldman took a year’s leave from his job as a religion reporter for The New York Times and enrolled in the Harvard Divinity School. What began as a project to deepen his knowledge of the world’s sacred beliefs turned out to be an extraordinary journey of spiritual illumination, one in which Goldman reexamined his own faith as an Orthodox Jew and opened his mind to the great religions of the world. In his year at Harvard, Goldman found to his surprise that his fellow students were not straitlaced, somber clerics, but a diverse, vibrant, and sometimes embattled group from every major religion, united by their deep spiritual commitment. Even more surprising was the spiritual climate of the Divinity School itself: Far from being an ivory tower or a bastion of old-time Christian piety, the school was a forum for passionate debate on the relationships between religion and politics, social mores and sexuality. Written with warmth, humor, and penetrating clarity, The Search for God at Harvard is a book for anyone who has wrestled with the question of what it means to take religion seriously today. Praise for The Search for God at Harvard: “Personal yet informative, warm and humorous, beautifully written. In a word, superb.” –Elie Wiesel “Is it possible to honor the truth of one’s own religion while being genuinely open to others? In The Search for God at Harvard, Ari Goldman tells his story in so fine a manner that he helps us to understand why the answer must be yes.” –The New York Times Book Review “Excellent: intelligent, informative, infused with humor.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer “Enriching . . . well-written, absorbing.” –The Boston Globe “A valuable and unique contribution.” –The Washington Post Book World
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345377060
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 301
Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR In 1985 Ari L. Goldman took a year’s leave from his job as a religion reporter for The New York Times and enrolled in the Harvard Divinity School. What began as a project to deepen his knowledge of the world’s sacred beliefs turned out to be an extraordinary journey of spiritual illumination, one in which Goldman reexamined his own faith as an Orthodox Jew and opened his mind to the great religions of the world. In his year at Harvard, Goldman found to his surprise that his fellow students were not straitlaced, somber clerics, but a diverse, vibrant, and sometimes embattled group from every major religion, united by their deep spiritual commitment. Even more surprising was the spiritual climate of the Divinity School itself: Far from being an ivory tower or a bastion of old-time Christian piety, the school was a forum for passionate debate on the relationships between religion and politics, social mores and sexuality. Written with warmth, humor, and penetrating clarity, The Search for God at Harvard is a book for anyone who has wrestled with the question of what it means to take religion seriously today. Praise for The Search for God at Harvard: “Personal yet informative, warm and humorous, beautifully written. In a word, superb.” –Elie Wiesel “Is it possible to honor the truth of one’s own religion while being genuinely open to others? In The Search for God at Harvard, Ari Goldman tells his story in so fine a manner that he helps us to understand why the answer must be yes.” –The New York Times Book Review “Excellent: intelligent, informative, infused with humor.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer “Enriching . . . well-written, absorbing.” –The Boston Globe “A valuable and unique contribution.” –The Washington Post Book World
Finding God in the Questions
Author: Timothy Johnson
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830833471
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
An editor of ABC News describes his own spiritual journey that led him, as a man of science, to his own answers about God and Jesus, and encourages others to confront their own questions of faith to further the search for God.
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830833471
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
An editor of ABC News describes his own spiritual journey that led him, as a man of science, to his own answers about God and Jesus, and encourages others to confront their own questions of faith to further the search for God.
The Probability of God
Author: Dr. Stephen D. Unwin
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 1400054788
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Does God exist? This is probably the most debated question in the history of mankind. Scholars, scientists, and philosophers have spent their lifetimes trying to prove or disprove the existence of God, only to have their theories crucified by other scholars, scientists, and philosophers. Where the debate breaks down is in the ambiguities and colloquialisms of language. But, by using a universal, unambiguous language—namely, mathematics—can this question finally be answered definitively? That’s what Dr. Stephen Unwin attempts to do in this riveting, accessible, and witty book, The Probability of God. At its core, this groundbreaking book reveals how a math equation developed more than 200 years ago by noted European philosopher Thomas Bayes can be used to calculate the probability that God exists. The equation itself is much more complicated than a simple coin toss (heads, He’s up there running the show; tails, He’s not). Yet Dr. Unwin writes with a clarity that makes his mathematical proof easy for even the nonmathematician to understand and a verve that makes his book a delight to read. Leading you carefully through each step in his argument, he demonstrates in the end that God does indeed exist. Whether you’re a devout believer and agree with Dr. Unwin’s proof or are unsure about all things divine, you will find this provocative book enlightening and engaging. “One of the most innovative works [in the science and religion movement] is The Probability of God...An entertaining exercise in thinking.”—Michael Shermer, Scientific American “Unwin’s book [is] peppered with wry, self-deprecating humor that makes the scientific discussions more accessible...Spiritually inspiring.”--Chicago Sun Times “A pleasantly breezy account of some complicated matters well worth learning about.”--Philadelphia Inquirer “One of the best things about the book is its humor.”--Cleveland Plain Dealer “In a book that is surprisingly lighthearted and funny, Unwin manages to pack in a lot of facts about science and philosophy.”--Salt Lake Tribune
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 1400054788
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Does God exist? This is probably the most debated question in the history of mankind. Scholars, scientists, and philosophers have spent their lifetimes trying to prove or disprove the existence of God, only to have their theories crucified by other scholars, scientists, and philosophers. Where the debate breaks down is in the ambiguities and colloquialisms of language. But, by using a universal, unambiguous language—namely, mathematics—can this question finally be answered definitively? That’s what Dr. Stephen Unwin attempts to do in this riveting, accessible, and witty book, The Probability of God. At its core, this groundbreaking book reveals how a math equation developed more than 200 years ago by noted European philosopher Thomas Bayes can be used to calculate the probability that God exists. The equation itself is much more complicated than a simple coin toss (heads, He’s up there running the show; tails, He’s not). Yet Dr. Unwin writes with a clarity that makes his mathematical proof easy for even the nonmathematician to understand and a verve that makes his book a delight to read. Leading you carefully through each step in his argument, he demonstrates in the end that God does indeed exist. Whether you’re a devout believer and agree with Dr. Unwin’s proof or are unsure about all things divine, you will find this provocative book enlightening and engaging. “One of the most innovative works [in the science and religion movement] is The Probability of God...An entertaining exercise in thinking.”—Michael Shermer, Scientific American “Unwin’s book [is] peppered with wry, self-deprecating humor that makes the scientific discussions more accessible...Spiritually inspiring.”--Chicago Sun Times “A pleasantly breezy account of some complicated matters well worth learning about.”--Philadelphia Inquirer “One of the best things about the book is its humor.”--Cleveland Plain Dealer “In a book that is surprisingly lighthearted and funny, Unwin manages to pack in a lot of facts about science and philosophy.”--Salt Lake Tribune
Finding God Beyond Harvard
Author: Kelly Monroe Kullberg
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830837205
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
Engaging narrative and provocative content come together in this mind-stretching and heart-challenging journey. Come with Kelly Monroe Kullberg on an intellectual road trip as The Veritas Forum explores the deepest questions of the university world and the culture at large. Discover that Veritas transcends philosophy or religion and instead brings us to true life.
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830837205
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
Engaging narrative and provocative content come together in this mind-stretching and heart-challenging journey. Come with Kelly Monroe Kullberg on an intellectual road trip as The Veritas Forum explores the deepest questions of the university world and the culture at large. Discover that Veritas transcends philosophy or religion and instead brings us to true life.
The Shadow of God
Author: Michael Rosen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674244613
Category : PHILOSOPHY
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
Michael Rosen shows how the redemptive hope of religion became the redemptive hope of historical progress. This was the heart of German Idealism: purpose lay not in God’s judgment but in worldly projects; freedom required not being subject to arbitrary authority, human or divine. Yet purpose and freedom never shed their theistic structure.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674244613
Category : PHILOSOPHY
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
Michael Rosen shows how the redemptive hope of religion became the redemptive hope of historical progress. This was the heart of German Idealism: purpose lay not in God’s judgment but in worldly projects; freedom required not being subject to arbitrary authority, human or divine. Yet purpose and freedom never shed their theistic structure.
Homeless at Harvard
Author: John Christopher Frame
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 0310318688
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 189
Book Description
Harvard Square is at the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the business district around Harvard University. It’s a place of history, culture, and some of the most momentous events of the nation. But it’s also a gathering place for some of the city’s homeless. What is life like for the homeless in Harvard Square? Do they have anything to tell people about life? And God? That’s what Harvard student John Frame discovered and shares in Homeless at Harvard. While taking his final course at Harvard, John Frame stepped outside the walls of academia and onto the streets, pursuing a different kind of education with his homeless friends. What he found—in the way of community and how people understand themselves---may surprise you. In this unique book, each of these urban pioneers shares his own story, providing insider perspectives of life as homeless people see it. This heartwarming page-turner shows how John learned with, from, and about his homeless friends—who together tell an unforgettable story—helping readers’ better understand problems outside themselves and that they’re more similar to those on the streets than they may have believed.
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 0310318688
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 189
Book Description
Harvard Square is at the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the business district around Harvard University. It’s a place of history, culture, and some of the most momentous events of the nation. But it’s also a gathering place for some of the city’s homeless. What is life like for the homeless in Harvard Square? Do they have anything to tell people about life? And God? That’s what Harvard student John Frame discovered and shares in Homeless at Harvard. While taking his final course at Harvard, John Frame stepped outside the walls of academia and onto the streets, pursuing a different kind of education with his homeless friends. What he found—in the way of community and how people understand themselves---may surprise you. In this unique book, each of these urban pioneers shares his own story, providing insider perspectives of life as homeless people see it. This heartwarming page-turner shows how John learned with, from, and about his homeless friends—who together tell an unforgettable story—helping readers’ better understand problems outside themselves and that they’re more similar to those on the streets than they may have believed.
Church in the Wild
Author: Brett Malcolm Grainger
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674919378
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
A religious studies scholar argues that in antebellum America, evangelicals, not Transcendentalists, connected ordinary Americans with their spiritual roots in the natural world. We have long credited Emerson and his fellow Transcendentalists with revolutionizing religious life in America and introducing a new appreciation of nature. Breaking with Protestant orthodoxy, these New Englanders claimed that God could be found not in church but in forest, fields, and streams. Their spiritual nonconformity had thrilling implications but never traveled far beyond their circle. In this essential reconsideration of American faith in the years leading up to the Civil War, Brett Malcolm Grainger argues that it was not the Transcendentalists but the evangelical revivalists who transformed the everyday religious life of Americans and spiritualized the natural environment. Evangelical Christianity won believers from the rural South to the industrial North: this was the true popular religion of the antebellum years. Revivalists went to the woods not to free themselves from the constraints of Christianity but to renew their ties to God. Evangelical Christianity provided a sense of enchantment for those alienated by a rapidly industrializing world. In forested camp meetings and riverside baptisms, in private contemplation and public water cures, in electrotherapy and mesmerism, American evangelicals communed with nature, God, and one another. A distinctive spirituality emerged pairing personal piety with a mystical relation to nature. As Church in the Wild reveals, the revivalist attitude toward nature and the material world, which echoed that of Catholicism, spread like wildfire among Christians of all backgrounds during the years leading up to the Civil War.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674919378
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
A religious studies scholar argues that in antebellum America, evangelicals, not Transcendentalists, connected ordinary Americans with their spiritual roots in the natural world. We have long credited Emerson and his fellow Transcendentalists with revolutionizing religious life in America and introducing a new appreciation of nature. Breaking with Protestant orthodoxy, these New Englanders claimed that God could be found not in church but in forest, fields, and streams. Their spiritual nonconformity had thrilling implications but never traveled far beyond their circle. In this essential reconsideration of American faith in the years leading up to the Civil War, Brett Malcolm Grainger argues that it was not the Transcendentalists but the evangelical revivalists who transformed the everyday religious life of Americans and spiritualized the natural environment. Evangelical Christianity won believers from the rural South to the industrial North: this was the true popular religion of the antebellum years. Revivalists went to the woods not to free themselves from the constraints of Christianity but to renew their ties to God. Evangelical Christianity provided a sense of enchantment for those alienated by a rapidly industrializing world. In forested camp meetings and riverside baptisms, in private contemplation and public water cures, in electrotherapy and mesmerism, American evangelicals communed with nature, God, and one another. A distinctive spirituality emerged pairing personal piety with a mystical relation to nature. As Church in the Wild reveals, the revivalist attitude toward nature and the material world, which echoed that of Catholicism, spread like wildfire among Christians of all backgrounds during the years leading up to the Civil War.
God-Fearing and Free
Author: Jason W. Stevens
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674058844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449
Book Description
Religion has been on the rise in America for decades—which strikes many as a shocking new development. To the contrary, Jason Stevens asserts, the rumors of the death of God were premature. Americans have always conducted their cultural life through religious symbols, never more so than during the Cold War. In God-Fearing and Free, Stevens discloses how the nation, on top of the world and torn between grandiose self-congratulation and doubt about the future, opened the way for a new master narrative. The book shows how the American public, powered by a national religious revival, was purposefully disillusioned regarding the country’s mythical innocence and fortified for an epochal struggle with totalitarianism. Stevens reveals how the Augustinian doctrine of original sin was refurbished and then mobilized in a variety of cultural discourses that aimed to shore up democratic society against threats preying on the nation’s internal weaknesses. Suddenly, innocence no longer meant a clear conscience. Instead it became synonymous with totalitarian ideologies of the fascist right or the communist left, whose notions of perfectability were dangerously close to millenarian ideals at the heart of American Protestant tradition. As America became riddled with self-doubt, ruminations on the meaning of power and the future of the globe during the “American Century” renewed the impetus to religion. Covering a wide selection of narrative and cultural forms, Stevens shows how writers, artists, and intellectuals, the devout as well as the nonreligious, disseminated the terms of this cultural dialogue, disputing, refining, and challenging it—effectively making the conservative case against modernity as liberals floundered.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674058844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449
Book Description
Religion has been on the rise in America for decades—which strikes many as a shocking new development. To the contrary, Jason Stevens asserts, the rumors of the death of God were premature. Americans have always conducted their cultural life through religious symbols, never more so than during the Cold War. In God-Fearing and Free, Stevens discloses how the nation, on top of the world and torn between grandiose self-congratulation and doubt about the future, opened the way for a new master narrative. The book shows how the American public, powered by a national religious revival, was purposefully disillusioned regarding the country’s mythical innocence and fortified for an epochal struggle with totalitarianism. Stevens reveals how the Augustinian doctrine of original sin was refurbished and then mobilized in a variety of cultural discourses that aimed to shore up democratic society against threats preying on the nation’s internal weaknesses. Suddenly, innocence no longer meant a clear conscience. Instead it became synonymous with totalitarian ideologies of the fascist right or the communist left, whose notions of perfectability were dangerously close to millenarian ideals at the heart of American Protestant tradition. As America became riddled with self-doubt, ruminations on the meaning of power and the future of the globe during the “American Century” renewed the impetus to religion. Covering a wide selection of narrative and cultural forms, Stevens shows how writers, artists, and intellectuals, the devout as well as the nonreligious, disseminated the terms of this cultural dialogue, disputing, refining, and challenging it—effectively making the conservative case against modernity as liberals floundered.
Evolution, Games, and God
Author: Martin A. Nowak
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674075536
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398
Book Description
According to the reigning competition-driven model of evolution, selfish behaviors that maximize an organism’s reproductive potential offer a fitness advantage over self-sacrificing behaviors—rendering unselfish behavior for the sake of others a mystery that requires extra explanation. Evolution, Games, and God addresses this conundrum by exploring how cooperation, working alongside mutation and natural selection, plays a critical role in populations from microbes to human societies. Inheriting a tendency to cooperate, argue the contributors to this book, may be as beneficial as the self-preserving instincts usually thought to be decisive in evolutionary dynamics. Assembling experts in mathematical biology, history of science, psychology, philosophy, and theology, Martin Nowak and Sarah Coakley take an interdisciplinary approach to the terms “cooperation” and “altruism.” Using game theory, the authors elucidate mechanisms by which cooperation—a form of working together in which one individual benefits at the cost of another—arises through natural selection. They then examine altruism—cooperation which includes the sometimes conscious choice to act sacrificially for the collective good—as a key concept in scientific attempts to explain the origins of morality. Discoveries in cooperation go beyond the spread of genes in a population to include the spread of cultural transformations such as languages, ethics, and religious systems of meaning. The authors resist the presumption that theology and evolutionary theory are inevitably at odds. Rather, in rationally presenting a number of theological interpretations of the phenomena of cooperation and altruism, they find evolutionary explanation and theology to be strongly compatible.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674075536
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398
Book Description
According to the reigning competition-driven model of evolution, selfish behaviors that maximize an organism’s reproductive potential offer a fitness advantage over self-sacrificing behaviors—rendering unselfish behavior for the sake of others a mystery that requires extra explanation. Evolution, Games, and God addresses this conundrum by exploring how cooperation, working alongside mutation and natural selection, plays a critical role in populations from microbes to human societies. Inheriting a tendency to cooperate, argue the contributors to this book, may be as beneficial as the self-preserving instincts usually thought to be decisive in evolutionary dynamics. Assembling experts in mathematical biology, history of science, psychology, philosophy, and theology, Martin Nowak and Sarah Coakley take an interdisciplinary approach to the terms “cooperation” and “altruism.” Using game theory, the authors elucidate mechanisms by which cooperation—a form of working together in which one individual benefits at the cost of another—arises through natural selection. They then examine altruism—cooperation which includes the sometimes conscious choice to act sacrificially for the collective good—as a key concept in scientific attempts to explain the origins of morality. Discoveries in cooperation go beyond the spread of genes in a population to include the spread of cultural transformations such as languages, ethics, and religious systems of meaning. The authors resist the presumption that theology and evolutionary theory are inevitably at odds. Rather, in rationally presenting a number of theological interpretations of the phenomena of cooperation and altruism, they find evolutionary explanation and theology to be strongly compatible.