Religion Against the Self

Religion Against the Self PDF Author: Isabelle Clark-Decès
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195113640
Category : Hinduism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study, based on the author's fieldwork among rural Tamil villagers in South India, focuses on the ways in which people in this society interact with the supernatural beings who play such a large role in their personal and corporate lives. Isabelle Navokov looks at a spectrum of ritualized contexts in which the boundaries between the natural and spiritual worlds are penetrated and communication takes place. Throughout, Nabokov's meticulous analysis sheds new light on this hiterto almost unknown domain - and entire range of fascinating phenomena basic to South Indian religion as it is really lived.

Religion Against the Self

Religion Against the Self PDF Author: Isabelle Clark-Decès
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195113640
Category : Hinduism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study, based on the author's fieldwork among rural Tamil villagers in South India, focuses on the ways in which people in this society interact with the supernatural beings who play such a large role in their personal and corporate lives. Isabelle Navokov looks at a spectrum of ritualized contexts in which the boundaries between the natural and spiritual worlds are penetrated and communication takes place. Throughout, Nabokov's meticulous analysis sheds new light on this hiterto almost unknown domain - and entire range of fascinating phenomena basic to South Indian religion as it is really lived.

Martyrdom, Self-sacrifice, and Self-immolation

Martyrdom, Self-sacrifice, and Self-immolation PDF Author: Margo Kitts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190656484
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book Here

Book Description
Suicide in the forms of martyrdom, self-sacrifice, or self-immolation is perennially controversial: Should it rightly be termed suicide? Does religion sanction it? Should it be celebrated or anathematized? At least some idealization of such self-chosen deaths is found in every religious tradition treated in this volume, from ascetic heroes who conquer their passions to save others by dying, to righteous warriors who suffer and die valiantly while challenging the status quo. At the same time, there are persistent disputes about the concepts used to justify these deaths, such as altruism, heroism, and religion itself. In this volume, renowned scholars bring their literary and historical expertise to bear on the contested issue of religiously sanctioned suicide. Three examine contemporary movements with disputed classical roots, while eleven look at classical religious literatures which variously laud and disparage figures who invite self-harm to the point of death. Overall, the volume offers an important scholarly corrective to the axiom that religious traditions simply and always embrace life at any cost.

Religion for Atheists

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

Get Book Here

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 Case Against Religion

The Case Against Religion PDF Author: Albert Ellis
Publisher: Amer Atheist Press
ISBN: 9780910309189
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 57

Get Book Here

Book Description


Anti-Theist: Against Religion: And Why You Should Be Too!

Anti-Theist: Against Religion: And Why You Should Be Too! PDF Author: Chris Mallard
Publisher: Anti-Theist
ISBN: 9781090270009
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
Anti-Theist: And This Is Why is an introductory look into atheism/anti-theism and uses quotes, scriptures and a dash of humor to help the nonbeliever and believer alike understand what it is to be a person who is against religion. I give the reader a clear understanding of the differences between a theist, deist, atheist, agnostic, and an anti-theist then I discuss numerous topics including the treatment of women in religion, the sheer ridiculousness of the ancient text these belief systems are based on and the charlatans who use it as a weapon to prey on the weak and helpless.I realize the term 'Anti-Theist' and the idea of forbidding someone from practicing and teaching a religion sounds so very horrible but you've got to ask yourself the question why. Why would all of us atheist nutbags, and our numbers are growing, want to take God out of your courthouses, off your money, ban it from public practice or display and, heaven forbid, ban you from teaching it to your children? Why would someone want to do that? Read the book and find out.If you're a religious person you could see this as a 'Know thy enemy' moment. Study up on us devil worshiping, baby eating anti-theists and see why we think you're the crazy ones. Mmmm baby. Thank you and enjoy.Caution: Grown up concepts and there is a bit of adult [email protected]: //www.facebook.com/christopher10

Psychology as Religion

Psychology as Religion PDF Author: Paul C. Vitz
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802807250
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a virtually rewritten second edition of New York University Professor Paul Vitz's profoundly important analysis of modern psychology. Vitz maintains that psychology in our day has become a religion, a secular cult of self, and has become part of the problem of modern life rather than part of its resolution.

Jesus > Religion

Jesus > Religion PDF Author: Jefferson Bethke
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 1400205409
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Abandon dead, dry, religious rule-keeping and embrace the promise of being truly known and deeply loved. Jefferson Bethke burst into the cultural conversation with a passionate, provocative poem titled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus." The 4-minute video became an overnight sensation, with 7 million YouTube views in its first 48 hours (and 23+ million in a year). Bethke's message clearly struck a chord with believers and nonbelievers alike, triggering an avalanche of responses running the gamut from encouraged to enraged. In his New York Times bestseller Jesus > Religion, Bethke unpacks similar contrasts that he drew in the poem--highlighting the difference between teeth gritting and grace, law and love, performance and peace, despair, and hope. With refreshing candor, he delves into the motivation behind his message, beginning with the unvarnished tale of his own plunge from the pinnacle of a works-based, fake-smile existence that sapped his strength and led him down a path of destructive behavior. Along the way, Bethke gives you the tools you need to: Humbly and prayerfully open your mind Understand Jesus for all that he is View the church from a brand-new perspective Bethke is quick to acknowledge that he's not a pastor or theologian, but simply an ordinary, twenty-something who cried out for a life greater than the one for which he had settled. On this journey, Bethke discovered the real Jesus, who beckoned him with love beyond the props of false religion. Praise for Jesus > Religion: "Jeff's book will make you stop and listen to a voice in your heart that may have been drowned out by the noise of religion. Listen to that voice, then follow it--right to the feet of Jesus." --Bob Goff, author of New York Times bestsellers Love Does and Everybody, Always "The book you hold in your hands is Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz meets C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity meets Augustine's Confessions. This book is going to awaken an entire generation to Jesus and His grace." --Derwin L. Gray, lead pastor of Transformation Church, author of Limitless Life: Breaking Free from the Labels That Hold You Back

Transcendence and Self-transcendence

Transcendence and Self-transcendence PDF Author: Merold Westphal
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253344137
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Get Book Here

Book Description
The question of the transcendence of God has traditionally been thought in terms of the difference between pantheism, which affirms that God is wholly "within" the world, and theism, which affirms that God is both "within" and "outside" the world, both immanent and transcendent. Against Heidegger's critique of onto-theology and the general postmodern concern for respecting and preserving the difference of the other, Merold Westphal seeks to rethink divine transcendence in relation to modes of human self-transcendence. Touching upon Spinoza, Hegel, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Aquinas, Barth, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Derrida, and Marion, Westphal's work centers around a critique of onto-theology, the importance of alterity, the decentered self, and the autonomous transcendental ego. Westphal's phenomenology of faith sets this book into the main currents of Continental philosophy of religion today.

God Is Not Great

God Is Not Great PDF Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551991764
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Saving God

Saving God PDF Author: Mark Johnston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830443
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
A bold and persuasive case for abandoning old religions and still believing in God In this book, Mark Johnston argues that God needs to be saved not only from the distortions of the "undergraduate atheists" (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) but, more importantly, from the idolatrous tendencies of religion itself. Each monotheistic religion has its characteristic ways of domesticating True Divinity, of taming God's demands so that they do not radically threaten our self-love and false righteousness. Turning the monotheistic critique of idolatry on the monotheisms themselves, Johnston shows that much in these traditions must be condemned as false and spiritually debilitating. A central claim of the book is that supernaturalism is idolatry. If this is right, everything changes; we cannot place our salvation in jeopardy by tying it essentially to the supernatural cosmologies of the ancient Near East. Remarkably, Johnston rehabilitates the ideas of the Fall and of salvation within a naturalistic framework; he then presents a conception of God that both resists idolatry and is wholly consistent with the deliverances of the natural sciences. Princeton University Press is publishing Saving God in conjunction with Johnston's forthcoming book Surviving Death, which takes up the crux of supernaturalist belief, namely, the belief in life after death. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.