Author: Dr. (TOM) DICKERSON, DD
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1483622762
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Never in the history of humanity has Orthodox religions been so out-of-touch with reasonable people. Religions have not learned from over two thousand years of repeated failures and bad choices. Reasonable people understand it is inconsistent to kill for the sake of peace; it is a contradiction to speak of love and choose hate; and it is impossible to have peace with violence. How much longer can we accept orthodox religion’s definition of happiness as it manifests empty rewards, deceptions, inconsistencies, and egocentric goals? How long can we flounder in this emotional, intellectual, and spiritual wasteland before we destroy all righteousness? Tom Dickerson openly examines orthodox religion’s history of human rights failures, inconsistencies, abuses, and atrocities according to their choices, not their rhetoric. This book does not deny god, nevertheless, it strongly questions the validity of Western Religion’s concept of an omnipotent, righteous, compassionate, domineering, vengeful, and child-like god. This book will educate, shock, and provoke the reader; as it openly advocates replacement of orthodox religion’s strict dogma with exercises, introspection, critical thought, meditation, personal balance, and freedom of choice. Every person can come to understand orthodox religion’s evilness and achieve self-awareness with personal balance and acceptance of responsibility. Personal balance, a foundational element of a positive holistic life, is available to all people willing to open their minds to reason. You are the creator of your destiny.
Author: Daan Beekers
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785337149
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 145
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Book Description
If piety, faith, and conviction constitute one side of the religious coin, then imperfection, uncertainty, and ambivalence constitute the other. Yet, scholars tend to separate these two domains and place experiences of inadequacy in everyday religious life – such as a wavering commitment, religious negligence or weakness in faith – outside the domain of religion ‘proper.’ Straying from the Straight Path breaks with this tendency by examining how self-perceived failure is, in many cases, part and parcel of religious practice and experience. Responding to the need for comparative approaches in the face of the largely separated fields of the anthropology of Islam and Christianity, this volume gives full attention to moral failure as a constitutive and potentially energizing force in the religious lives of both Muslims and Christians in different parts of the world.
Author: Antony Loewenstein
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers Aus.
ISBN: 1743289138
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? and Where do we find hope? We are introduced to the detail of different belief systems - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position. Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Brontë sisters. Antony Lowenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam. Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake encourages us to accept religious differences but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.
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: Ronald Inglehart
Publisher:
ISBN: 0197547044
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
Mass attachment to religion is rapidly declining in most of the world; Why, and What comes next?The world is becoming less religious. Since 2007, there has been a pervasive decline in religious belief and most of the world's people now say that God is less important in their lives than they said He was in the quarter century before 2007. The American public showed the most dramatic shift of all. The United States, which for many years stood as a highly religious outlier among the world's high-income countries, now ranks as the 12th least religious country for which data are available. Many factors contributed to this dramatic worldwide shift, but as Inglehart shows, certain ones stand out. For centuries, virtually all major religions encouraged women to stay home and produce as many children as possible; and they sternly discouraged divorce, abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and any other form of sexual behavior not linked with reproduction. These norms were necessary for societies to survive when facing high infant mortality and low life expectancy: societies that didn't instill them tended to die out. Recent technological advances have greatly increased life expectancy and cut infant mortality to a tiny fraction of its historic levels, making these norms no longer necessary for societal survival. These norms require repressing strong natural urges, but, since they present traditional norms as absolute values, most religions strongly resist change. The resulting tension, together with the fact that rising existential security has made people less dependent on religion, opened the way for an exodus from religion. Utilizing a massive global data base, Inglehart analyzes the conditions under which religiosity collapses, and explores its implications for the future.
Author: Jefferson Bethke
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 1400205409
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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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
Author: Todd M. Johnson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118323033
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Created by two of the field’s leading experts, this unique introduction to international religious demography outlines the challenges in interpreting data on religious adherence, and presents a contemporary portrait of global religious belief. Offers the first comprehensive overview of the field of international religious demography – detailing what we know about religious adherents around the world, and how we know it Examines religious freedom and diversity, including agnostics and atheists, on a global scale, highlighting trends over the past 100 years and projecting estimates for the year 2050 Outlines the issues and challenges related to definitions, taxonomies, sources, analyses, and other techniques in interpreting data on religious adherence Considers data from religious communities, censuses, surveys, and scholarly research, along with several in-depth case studies on the global Muslim population, religion in China, and the religious demography of recently created Sudan and South Sudan Argues against the belief that the twentieth-century was a ‘secular’ period by putting forward new evidence to the contrary Provides resources for measuring both qualitatively and quantitatively important data on the world's religious situation in the twenty-first century
Author: Donniel Hartman
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807063347
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
Why have the monotheistic religions failed to produce societies that live up to their ethical ideals? A prominent rabbi answers this question by looking at his own faith and offering a way for religion to heal itself. In Putting God Second, Rabbi Donniel Hartman tackles one of modern life’s most urgent and vexing questions: Why are the great monotheistic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—chronically unable to fulfill their own self-professed goal of creating individuals infused with moral sensitivity and societies governed by the highest ethical standards? To answer this question, Hartman takes a sober look at the moral peaks and valleys of his own tradition, Judaism, and diagnoses it with clarity, creativity, and erudition. He rejects both the sweeping denouncements of those who view religion as an inherent impediment to moral progress and the apologetics of fundamentalists who proclaim religion’s moral perfection against all evidence to the contrary. Hartman identifies the primary source of religion’s moral failure in what he terms its “autoimmune disease,” or the way religions so often undermine their own deepest values. While God obligates the good and calls us into its service, Hartman argues, God simultaneously and inadvertently makes us morally blind. The nature of this self-defeating condition is that the human religious desire to live in relationship with God often distracts religious believers from their traditions’ core moral truths. The answer Hartman offers is this: put God second. In order to fulfill religion’s true vision for humanity—an uncompromising focus on the ethical treatment of others—religious believers must hold their traditions accountable to the highest independent moral standards. Decency toward one’s neighbor must always take precedence over acts of religious devotion, and ethical piety must trump ritual piety. For as long as devotion to God comes first, responsibility to other people will trail far, far behind. In this book, Judaism serves as a template for how the challenge might be addressed by those of other faiths, whose sacred scriptures similarly evoke both the sublime heights of human aspiration and the depths of narcissistic moral blindness. In Putting God Second, Rabbi Hartman offers a lucid analysis of religion’s flaws, as well as a compelling resource, and vision, for its repair.
Author: Robert Royal
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594035172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Secular humanists and other “progressives” have been predicting the demise of religion for the past 250 years. But they keep running into a problem: those who were supposed to be liberated by the secular gospel that God is Dead aren’t buying it. Except for some parts of western Europe and in countries culturally destroyed by Communism, secularization in the radical sense has not occurred. While it has not obliterated the religious impulse, however, the drive towards “progressive irreligion” has, Robert Royal believes, encouraged ignorance of religion’s central role in the development of the West. In The God That Did Not Fail, Royal offers an original reading of religion in ancient Greece and Rome, of Christianity and Judaism, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation, the several modern Enlightenments, culminating with a profound assessment of our current postmodern moment. He concludes that since religion is a permanent part of human nature and of the particular character of the West, our efforts should be directed not into a quixotic effort to deny the undeniable, especially as we face challenges from Islamic fundamentalism, but into promoting a well thought out and dynamic interplay of faith, reason, and modern freedoms.
Author: Geoffrey Nelson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113682622X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
The twentieth century has been marked by an unprecedented outburst of religious activity on a world-wide scale, and in particular by a mushrooming of numerous religious movements. This work, first published in 1987, takes a fresh approach to the understanding of this phenomenon, an approach which takes into account new concepts of human nature and of religion.
