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Author: Rodney Stark
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006174333X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 605
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Book Description
Winner of the 2008 Christianity Today Award of Merit in Theology/Ethics The History of God In Discovering God, award-winning sociologist Rodney Stark presents a monumental history of the origins of the great religions from the Stone Age to the Modern Age and wrestles with the central questions of religion and belief.
Author: Rodney Stark
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006174333X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 605
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Book Description
Winner of the 2008 Christianity Today Award of Merit in Theology/Ethics The History of God In Discovering God, award-winning sociologist Rodney Stark presents a monumental history of the origins of the great religions from the Stone Age to the Modern Age and wrestles with the central questions of religion and belief.
Author: Raymond Macdonald Alden Jr
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1984586335
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
The author describes a unique image of God and tells how it has led him into his ninety-ninth year, physically and mentally active, in good health, and without stress or conflict. In this view, science and religion are perfectly compatible with each other, and both become consistent with teachings about God by mainstream religions. The human body, brain, and mind can learn to function in harmony with one another, aligned with God’s objectives as they are understood and taught by philosophers, prophets, and saints of old; by ministers, priests, and rabbis today; and by shamans, kahunas, and medicine men of ancient times.
Author: T.M. Luhrmann
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691234442
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people—as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn’t easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort—by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others—helps to explain the enduring power of faith. Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more. A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits—but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.
Author: John C. Wathey
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1633880745
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
An essential feature of religious experience across many cultures is the intuitive feeling of God's presence. More than any rituals or doctrines, it is this experience that anchors religious faith, yet it has been largely ignored in the scientific literature on religion.Starting with a vivid narrative account of the life-threatening hike that triggered his own mystical experience, biologist John Wathey takes the reader on a scientific journey to find the sources of religious feeling and the illusion of God's presence. His book delves into the biological origins of this compelling feeling, attributing it to innate neural circuitry that evolved to promote the mother-child bond. Dr. Wathey argues that evolution has programmed the infant brain to expect the presence of a loving being who responds to the child's needs. As the infant grows into adulthood, this innate feeling is eventually transferred to the realm of religion, where it is reactivated through the symbols, imagery, and rituals of worship. The author interprets our various conceptions of God in biological terms as illusory supernormal stimuli that fill an emotional and cognitive vacuum left over from infancy. These insights shed new light on some of the most vexing puzzles of religion, like the popular belief in a god who is judgmental and punishing, yet also unconditionally loving; the extraordinary tenacity of faith; the greater religiosity of women relative to men; religious obsessions with sex; the mysterious compulsion to pray; the seemingly irrepressible feminine attributes of God, even in traditionally patriarchal religions; and the strange allure of cults. Finally, Dr. Wathey considers the hypothesis that religion evolved to foster reproductive success, arguing that, in an age of potentially ruinous overpopulation, magical thinking has become a luxury we can no longer afford, one that distracts us from urgent threats to our planet.Deeply researched yet elegantly written in a jargon-free and accessible style, this book presents a compelling interpretation of the evolutionary origins of spirituality and religion.
Author: Tim Storey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780884193562
Category : Christian life
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
Author: Kenneth A. Dobbs
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 164701820X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
What holds society together? How does civilization survive from collapsing in on itself? In this work, Kenneth A. Dobbs describes how religion is the cause of civilization’s rise and prosperity. Beginning with psychological theories on human nature, Dobbs establishes that humanity needs the religious values of truth, beauty, and goodness to flourish. He then proves this psychological theory by analyzing religion’s role in the historical developments of civilization in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Jerusalem, Greece, Rome, and Christendom. He also responds to rebuttals and objections against the thesis that religion is still necessary for modern civilization. The Idea of God explores the historical, political, and philosophical implications of both the implementation and rejection of religion within human civilization. Dobbs articulates religion’s necessary role in civilization, while also provocatively predicting Western civilization’s fate for rejecting religion: societal collapse. The book follows a long intellectual tradition of historians and philosophers who have argued a similar thesis including Polybius, St. Augustine, Arnold Toynbee, Russel Kirk, Richard M. Weaver, and Christopher Dawson. Dobbs reintroduces these classical ideas to the modern world.
Author: Thomas V. Morris
Publisher: Regent College Publishing
ISBN: 9781573831017
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
Author: Dale Ryan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780830811526
Category : Christian life
Languages : en
Pages : 68
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Book Description
Author: Arthur O. Roberts
Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco
ISBN: 9780060530686
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Portrays heaven as a world similar to ours without evil and suffering, drawing on the beliefs of top Christian minds to contend that people will continue to work, learn, and inhabit bodies after death.
Author: John M. Perry
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9781580510677
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
Exploring the Evolving View of God outlines cultural and historical limitations that continue to shape our language and ideas about God. It relates abstract thinking about God to the concrete history of ancient Israel and draws parallels between Israel's history and the New Testament confession of Jesus as Messiah.
