When Bad Things Happen to Other People

When Bad Things Happen to Other People PDF Author: John Portmann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134001711
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Although many of us deny it, it is not uncommon to feel pleasure over the suffering of others, particularly when we feel that suffering has been deserved. The German word for this concept-Schadenfreude-has become universal in its expression of this feeling. Drawing on the teachings of history's most prominent philosophers, John Portmann explores the concept of Schadenfreude in this rigorous, comprehensive, and absorbing study.

When Bad Things Happen to Other People

When Bad Things Happen to Other People PDF Author: John Portmann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134001711
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Although many of us deny it, it is not uncommon to feel pleasure over the suffering of others, particularly when we feel that suffering has been deserved. The German word for this concept-Schadenfreude-has become universal in its expression of this feeling. Drawing on the teachings of history's most prominent philosophers, John Portmann explores the concept of Schadenfreude in this rigorous, comprehensive, and absorbing study.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

When Bad Things Happen to Good People PDF Author: Harold S. Kushner
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 0805241930
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Offers an inspirational and compassionate approach to understanding the problems of life, and argues that we should continue to believe in God's fairness.

21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People

21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People PDF Author: Dave Earley
Publisher: Barbour Publishing
ISBN: 1628361476
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
If God is good, why does He allow suffering? Popular author Dave Earley provides solid biblical answers in 21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People. Why does God allow bad things to happen to "good" people? Popular author Dave Earley provides twenty-one key reasons, carefully drawn from scripture and accompanied by contemporary, real-life stories. Written in Earley's casual, readable style, 21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People promises hope and encouragement through the pain.

Finding Purpose in a Godless World

Finding Purpose in a Godless World PDF Author: Ralph Lewis, MD
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1633883868
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
A psychiatrist presents a compelling argument for how human purpose and caring emerged in a spontaneous and unguided universe. Can there be purpose without God? This book is about how human purpose and caring, like consciousness and absolutely everything else in existence, could plausibly have emerged and evolved unguided, bottom-up, in a spontaneous universe. A random world--which according to all the scientific evidence and despite our intuitions is the actual world we live in--is too often misconstrued as nihilistic, demotivating, or devoid of morality and meaning. Drawing on years of wide-ranging, intensive clinical experience as a psychiatrist, and his own family experience with cancer, Dr. Lewis helps readers understand how people cope with random adversity without relying on supernatural belief. In fact, as he explains, although coming to terms with randomness is often frightening, it can be liberating and empowering too. Written for those who desire a scientifically sound yet humanistic view of the world, Lewis's book examines science's inroads into the big questions that occupy religion and philosophy. He shows how our sense of purpose and meaning is entangled with mistaken intuitions that events in our lives happen for some intended cosmic reason and that the universe itself has inherent purpose. Dispelling this illusion, and integrating the findings of numerous scientific fields, he shows how not only the universe, life, and consciousness but also purpose, morality, and meaning could, in fact, have emerged and evolved spontaneously and unguided. There is persuasive evidence that these qualities evolved naturally and without mystery, biologically and culturally, in humans as conscious, goal-directed social animals. While acknowledging the social and psychological value of progressive forms of religion, the author respectfully critiques even the most sophisticated theistic arguments for a purposeful universe. Instead, he offers an evidence-based, realistic yet optimistic and empathetic perspective. This book will help people to see the scientific worldview of an unguided, spontaneous universe as awe-inspiring and foundational to building a more compassionate society.

When Good Things Happen to Bad People

When Good Things Happen to Bad People PDF Author: Martin H. Levinson
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1440120129
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
When Good Things Happen to Bad People offers an irreverent, fast-paced, fact-filled compendium of fifty case studies of notorious villains from Attila the Hun to Dick Cheney who triumphed in life despite, or because of, their dastardly deeds. This book is the perfect foil to Harold Kushner's international bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People. So why do good things happen to bad people? Maybe a certain number of baddies are simply going to get their share of good luck. Maybe "the devil" is running the universe and he or she likes pleasing his or her favorites. Maybe God is playing a joke on bad people by rewarding them on earth and then punishing them in an afterlife. Or maybe Edmund Burke was on the right track when he said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." For evil to triumph less, it follows that good people need to do something-like exposing wickedness when they are confronted with it. As the saying goes: "Sunshine is the best disinfectant."

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People PDF Author: David Arnold
Publisher: Charisma Media
ISBN: 1599794853
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description
This simple, comprehensive tool teaches readers that the suffering, distress, and frustration they've encountered are not outside the assistance of God's grace.

What Happens to Good People when Bad Things Happen

What Happens to Good People when Bad Things Happen PDF Author: Robert A. Schuller
Publisher: Fleming H. Revell Company
ISBN: 9780800717124
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
One of the twentieth century's most extraordinary Americans, Pearl Buck was the first person to make China accessible to the West. She recreated the lives of ordinary Chinese people in "The Good Earth," an overnight worldwide bestseller in 1932, later a blockbuster movie. Buck went on to become the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Long before anyone else, she foresaw China's future as a superpower, and she recognized the crucial importance for both countries of China's building a relationship with the United States. As a teenager she had witnessed the first stirrings of Chinese revolution, and as a young woman she narrowly escaped being killed in the deadly struggle between Chinese Nationalists and the newly formed Communist Party. Pearl grew up in an imperial China unchanged for thousands of years. She was the child of American missionaries, but she spoke Chinese before she learned English, and her friends were the children of Chinese farmers. She took it for granted that she was Chinese herself until she was eight years old, when the terrorist uprising known as the Boxer Rebellion forced her family to flee for their lives. It was the first of many desperate flights. Flood, famine, drought, bandits, and war formed the background of Pearl's life in China. "Asia was the real, the actual world," she said, "and my own country became the dreamworld." Pearl wrote about the realities of the only world she knew in "The Good Earth. "It was one of the last things she did before being finally forced out of China to settle for the first time in the United States. She was unknown and penniless with a failed marriage behind her, a disabled child to support, no prospects, and no way of telling that "The Good Earth "would sell tens of millions of copies. It transfixed a whole generation of readers just as Jung Chang's "Wild Swans "would do more than half a century later. No Westerner had ever written anything like this before, and no Chinese had either. Buck was the forerunner of a wave of Chinese Americans from Maxine Hong Kingston to Amy Tan. Until their books began coming out in the last few decades, her novels were unique in that they spoke for ordinary Asian people-- "translating my parents to me," said Hong Kingston, "and giving me our ancestry and our habitation." As a phenomenally successful writer and civil-rights campaigner, Buck did more than anyone else in her lifetime to change Western perceptions of China. In a world with its eyes trained on China today, she has much to tell us about what lies behind its astonishing reawakening.

Flat Broke with Two Goats

Flat Broke with Two Goats PDF Author: Jennifer McGaha
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1492655392
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
When life gets your goat, bring in the herd Jennifer McGaha never expected to own a goat named Merle. Or to be setting Merle up on dates and naming his doeling Merlene. She didn't expect to be buying organic yogurt for her chickens. She never thought she would be pulling camouflage carpet off her ceiling or rescuing opossums from her barn and calling it "date night." Most importantly, Jennifer never thought she would only have $4.57 in her bank account. When Jennifer discovered that she and her husband owed back taxes—a lot of back taxes—her world changed. Now desperate to save money, they foreclosed on their beloved suburban home and moved their family to a one-hundred-year-old cabin in a North Carolina holler. Soon enough, Jennifer's life began to more closely resemble her Appalachian ancestors than her upper-middle-class upbringing. But what started as a last-ditch effort to settle debts became a journey that revealed both the joys and challenges of living close to the land. Told with bold wit, unflinching honesty, and a firm foot in the traditions of Appalachia, Flat Broke with Two Goats blends stories of homesteading with the journey of two people rediscovering the true meaning of home.

Why Bad Things Don't Happen to Good People

Why Bad Things Don't Happen to Good People PDF Author: Shaul Rosenblatt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781988022185
Category : Bereavement
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description


Beyond Blame

Beyond Blame PDF Author: Carl Alasko Ph. D.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101517697
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The inspiring new book from the author of Emotional Bullshit reveals why no one is to blame-but everyone's accountable. For many, a rare day goes by in which the need to blame does not arise-be it to cover one's own errors or just to assign an unfortunate event some kind of name (i.e., "If only X hadn't said X, we wouldn't be in this mess.") And even for those who are somewhat better at keeping the impulse in check-it is still there. According to psychologist Carl Alasko, blame is such an intrinsic part of how we humans communicate that we rarely take a look at what we're actually doing-and how it can affect our relationships. In this book, Alasko reveals that the need to assign blame when something bad happens stems from a very deep desire we all share to "see justice done". Understandable when a grave crime has been committed, but it can become a dangerous habit if we begin to operate as though placing blame were somehow necessary if we want to change something or someone in our world. Yet this feeling that "someone has to pay" is seldom productive in initiating positive change. In Beyond Blame, Alasko teaches readers to recognize destruction that blame causes in their lives-oftentimes without their even being aware-and to put an end to it once and for all. The path to eliminating blame is not a quick or easy one but, as Carl Alasko demonstrates, it is a road that must be traveled if we hope to achieve true peace in our lives.