2000 Years of Disbelief

2000 Years of Disbelief PDF Author: James A. Haugt
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615920994
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Society rarely acknowledges the many and varied gifts that disbelievers give to the world. This insightful, witty collection sets the record straight by profiling dozens of famous people who were skeptical of conventional religious beliefs. Included, among others, are Isaac Asimov, W.E.B. DuBois, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, Omar Khayyam, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, John Stuart Mill, Ayn Rand, Gene Roddenberry, Margaret Sanger, George Bernard Shaw, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Voltaire, with many quotes that reveal their rejection of the supernatural.

2000 Years of Disbelief

2000 Years of Disbelief PDF Author: James A. Haugt
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615920994
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
Society rarely acknowledges the many and varied gifts that disbelievers give to the world. This insightful, witty collection sets the record straight by profiling dozens of famous people who were skeptical of conventional religious beliefs. Included, among others, are Isaac Asimov, W.E.B. DuBois, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, Omar Khayyam, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, John Stuart Mill, Ayn Rand, Gene Roddenberry, Margaret Sanger, George Bernard Shaw, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Voltaire, with many quotes that reveal their rejection of the supernatural.

The God Con

The God Con PDF Author: Lee Moller
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1525506803
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The crucifix is in! You can fool most of the people most of the time. In The God Con, Lee Moller, a life-long atheist and skeptic, looks at organized religion through the lens of the con. Organized religion has been selling an invisible product, that it never has to deliver, for thousands of years. It has given us bigotry, rampant pedophilia, terrorism, and bloodshed beyond imagining. And its acolytes have, in turn, given organized religion power over their bank accounts, their reproduction, and their very “souls”.

Why Religion Matters

Why Religion Matters PDF Author: Huston Smith
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061756245
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Huston Smith, the author of the classic bestseller The World's Religions, delivers a passionate, timely message: The human spirit is being suffocated by the dominant materialistic worldview of our times. Smith champions a society in which religion is once again treasured and authentically practiced as the vital source of human wisdom.

Battling the Gods

Battling the Gods PDF Author: Tim Whitmarsh
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307958337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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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.

The Diagnosis

The Diagnosis PDF Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 037542119X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of Einstein’s Dreams comes this harrowing tale of one man's struggle to cope in a wired world, even as his own biological wiring short-circuits. As Boston’s Red Line shuttles Bill Chalmers to work one summer morning, something extraordinary happens. Suddenly, he can't remember which stop is his, where he works, or even who he is. The only thing he can remember is his corporate motto: the maximum information in the minimum time. Bill’s memory returns, but a strange numbness afflicts him. As he attempts to find a diagnosis for his deteriorating illness, he descends into a nightmarish tangle of inconclusive results, his company’s manic frenzy, and his family’s disbelief. Ultimately, Bill discovers that he is fighting not just for his body but also for his soul.

God Talk

God Talk PDF Author: L. Rodney Sheffer
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1456837168
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description


Beyond the Cave

Beyond the Cave PDF Author: Peter Christian Vardy
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1789041759
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Truth is increasingly marginalized. Powerful news interests, social media and political orators all seem to point to the idea that the days of absolute Truth are past. Religions have always claimed to stand for a transcendent dimension to reality and to the idea of an absolute claim to Truth but, in the West, religion has been and is declining in influence. Fundamentalism is on the rise and this, combined with relativism, contributes to the current malaise. Peter Vardy has a passionate commitment to helping people think about key issues deeply, yet writes in a lucid and clear style. In Beyond the Cave he explains why claims to absolute Truth have become severely eroded but he also charts a way forward.

After Disbelief

After Disbelief PDF Author: Anthony T. Kronman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300259921
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
An intimate, philosophic quest for eternity, amidst the disenchantments and disappointments of our time "Anyone who, in our age of disbelief, longs to believe in God will find Mr. Kronman worth reading."--Andrew Stark, Wall Street Journal "Aims to persuade America's 'relentlessly rational' elites to acknowledge the existence of 'divinity.' . . . Kronman's ambition is to repair 'the schism between those for whom religion continues to matter and those who view it with amusement or contempt.'"--Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal Many people of faith believe the meaning of life depends on our connection to an eternal order of some kind. Atheists deride this belief as a childish superstition. In this wise and profound book, Anthony Kronman offers an alternative to these two entrenched positions, arguing that neither addresses the complexities of the human condition. We can never reach God, as religion promises, but cannot give up the longing to do so either. We are condemned by our nature to set goals we can neither abandon nor fulfill, yet paradoxically are able to approach more closely if we try. The human condition is one of inevitable disappointment tempered by moments of joy. Resolutely humanistic and theologically inspired, this moving book offers a rational path to the love of God amidst the disenchantments of our time.

The Last Day

The Last Day PDF Author: Glenn Kleier
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0446930288
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
An apocalyptic thriller centered around a mysterious woman with extraordinary powers.

Celebrities in Hell

Celebrities in Hell PDF Author: Warren Allen Smith
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557837529
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Celebrities is a paperback updating the 1,200-page Who's Who in Hell (2000). The premise is that "Hell" is a theological invention, that is does not physically exist. If it did, theists would put into Hell all who are listed; e.g., Woody Allen; Marlon Brando; George Clooney; Marlene Dietrich; Jodie Foster, Katharine Hepburn, Christopher Reeve. As Mark Twain observed, "Heaven for climate; Hell for company."