Author: Reza Aslan
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0553394738
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Zealot and host of Believer explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Author: Gerhart Burian Ladner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780520085497
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
"A marvelous book, lucid in its structure and superb in the wonderfully compressed presentation of individual topics. . . . It will certainly be recognized as a classic."--Robert L. Benson, University of California, Los Angeles "A marvelous book, lucid in its structure and superb in the wonderfully compressed presentation of individual topics. . . . It will certainly be recognized as a classic."--Robert L. Benson, University of California, Los Angeles
Author: Ronald Dworkin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674728041
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 71
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Book Description
In his last book, Ronald Dworkin addresses questions that men and women have asked through the ages: What is religion and what is God’s place in it? What is death and what is immortality? Based on the 2011 Einstein Lectures, Religion without God is inspired by remarks Einstein made that if religion consists of awe toward mysteries which “manifest themselves in the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, and which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive forms,” then, he, Einstein, was a religious person. Dworkin joins Einstein’s sense of cosmic mystery and beauty to the claim that value is objective, independent of mind, and immanent in the world. He rejects the metaphysics of naturalism—that nothing is real except what can be studied by the natural sciences. Belief in God is one manifestation of this deeper worldview, but not the only one. The conviction that God underwrites value presupposes a prior commitment to the independent reality of that value—a commitment that is available to nonbelievers as well. So theists share a commitment with some atheists that is more fundamental than what divides them. Freedom of religion should flow not from a respect for belief in God but from the right to ethical independence. Dworkin hoped that this short book would contribute to rational conversation and the softening of religious fear and hatred. Religion without God is the work of a humanist who recognized both the possibilities and limitations of humanity.
Author: Loyal D. Rue
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813535115
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 409
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Book Description
Annotation If religion is not about God, then what on earth is it about? Loyal Rue contends that religion is a series of strategies that aims to influence human nature so that we might think, feel, and act in ways that are good for us, both individually and collectively.
Author: Robert Gunderson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781608606146
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Divine Providence: God's Program for Humankind is a unique book that not only explores difficult, fundamental questions facing the modern world, but also creates a bridge between religions and philosophies by embracing the Divine in a very practical and rational manner. For centuries, the struggle between world views has caused division and conflict. But in this book, Christianity is reframed as a true expression of the Divine/human relationship, without denying or denigrating other major world religions. As society, especially Western culture, increases in diversity, the need grows for an interdependent view that encompasses wisdom and knowledge of both the ancient and modern world, as well as integrating the coexistence of science and religion. Divine Providence: God's Program for Humankind comingles both personal and society morality into a world view that embraces and satisfies both. The book challenges readers to consider one's own personal responsibility, as well as the collective responsibility that comes from being a citizen of this global network, called oneness. From the choices we make day to day, to how we interact and behave, Divine Providence: God's Program for Humankind explores not only what is relevant in this life, but also, the life to come. Author Robert Alden Gunderson is a retired construction engineer with personal experience with widely divergent cultures. He is a lay minister who has spent over 45 years grappling with the theoretical and practical issues of religion and society. Gunderson resides on Hawaii's Big Island with his wife, Trudi, and lives near his three adult children, Geoffrey, Jennifer and Michele. Publisher's website: http: //www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/DivineProvidence-GodsProgramForHumankind.htm
Author: Faoso F. Telaumbanua
Publisher: Exceller Books
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Book Description
There is no space whatsoever in this universe nor in the human mind, including the space called religion, that can contain the Creator of All Things. Anyone and anything that tries to monopolize God or the news about God will be torn apart and humiliated by its own stupidity and arrogance. Hopefully this book can help build brightness in the midst of a world filled with people whose love and admiration for their religion exceeds the love for God and fellow humans. Love for religion should not make people lose their minds, on the contrary, religion exists to help those who live in the dark.
Author: William Schweiker
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451416282
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Much of the rampant violence in the world today seems rooted in religion, and daily we see its vast potential for both creation and destruction. In the face of religious extremism, religious pluralism, and globalization, it has become profoundly important to reassess what the three often-conflicting Abrahamic traditions affirm about being human before God.
Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307958337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
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.
Author: Zondervan,
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
ISBN: 0310595487
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
Engaging with the Complex Subject of Theological Anthropology. Theological anthropology is a complicated doctrinal subject that needs to be elaborated with careful attention to its relation to other major doctrines. Among other things, it must confess the glory and misery of humanity, from creation in the image of God to the fall into a state of sin. It must reckon with a holism that spans distinctions between body, soul, and spirit, and a unity that encompasses male and female, as well as racial and cultural difference. The Christian Doctrine of Humanity represents the proceedings of the sixth annual Los Angeles Theology Conference, which sought, constructively and comprehensively, to engage the task of theological anthropology. The twelve diverse essays in this collection include discussions on: Human thought and the image of God. The relevance of biblical eschatology for philosophical anthropology. Living and flourishing in the Spirit. Vocation and the "oddness" of human nature. Each of the essays collected in this volume engage with Scripture as well as with others in the field—theologians both past and present, from different confessions—in order to provide constructive resources for contemporary systematic theology and to forge a theology for the future.
Author: R. F. M.
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 145023898X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 102
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Book Description
Who are we? Where do we come from? What is our destiny? In God, Divinity, the Universe, and Humankind, author R.F.M. addresses these questions and more, sharing his interpretations and reflections of an array of ideas related to human existence and destiny. Drawing on religious insights, R.F.M. provides many examples to provide a guide for those seeking wisdom about their life, their existence, their spiritual journey, and their destiny. God, Divinity, the Universe, and Humankind explores the doubts and perplexities humans have experienced throughout history and discusses how to find new understanding and guidance. This exploration of spirituality presents a psychiatrist's thoughts on the creation of the universe, our relatedness to God and to divinity, and the importance of faith in our life. It communicates the idea that in the whole orchestration of the universe, we are only the instruments; God is the composer, the conductor, and the player. We should surrender to Him in union and oneness in our spiritual origin and nature, for we all are the same from Him and all shall return in Him.
