Friendly Freethinker

Friendly Freethinker PDF Author: Chris Highland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Another dynamic collection of contemporary essays on Humanism, Religion and Nature by former minister and chaplain Chris Highland selected from his weekly "Highland Views" columns in the Asheville Citizen-Times. Friendly Freethinker follows the publication of A Freethinker's Gospel and Broken Bridges, each presenting provocative perspectives on faith and freethought in a fractured world. Positive, incisive, hopeful and helpful, essays include "Can We Talk About Religious Supremacy?," "Having Difficult Conversations without Destroying Relationships," "Battling Bullies in Boyhood and Beliefs," "The Man Who Changed His Name to God," "Why Does the World Still Need Scriptures?," "The Friendship of an Atheist and an Evangelical," "If There is a God in Nature, Which One?," "What I Would Most Like to Believe," "Mature Christians and Grown-up Atheists," "Does Religion Begin and End in Silence?" and many more (50 essays in all). Highland draws from a deep well of experiences in chaplaincy and teaching, exploring the edges of our comfortable communities and congregations, asking the questions that stir us to more rational thinking and practical action. Though he left the ministry--and faith--Highland is happily married to a progressive minister who reads, comments and helps edit his newspaper columns. Together, they model a creative, constructive approach to bridging differences of belief. Highland's writings exemplify a commitment to secular/spiritual communication so greatly needed in our culture today.

Friendly Freethinker

Friendly Freethinker PDF Author: Chris Highland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Another dynamic collection of contemporary essays on Humanism, Religion and Nature by former minister and chaplain Chris Highland selected from his weekly "Highland Views" columns in the Asheville Citizen-Times. Friendly Freethinker follows the publication of A Freethinker's Gospel and Broken Bridges, each presenting provocative perspectives on faith and freethought in a fractured world. Positive, incisive, hopeful and helpful, essays include "Can We Talk About Religious Supremacy?," "Having Difficult Conversations without Destroying Relationships," "Battling Bullies in Boyhood and Beliefs," "The Man Who Changed His Name to God," "Why Does the World Still Need Scriptures?," "The Friendship of an Atheist and an Evangelical," "If There is a God in Nature, Which One?," "What I Would Most Like to Believe," "Mature Christians and Grown-up Atheists," "Does Religion Begin and End in Silence?" and many more (50 essays in all). Highland draws from a deep well of experiences in chaplaincy and teaching, exploring the edges of our comfortable communities and congregations, asking the questions that stir us to more rational thinking and practical action. Though he left the ministry--and faith--Highland is happily married to a progressive minister who reads, comments and helps edit his newspaper columns. Together, they model a creative, constructive approach to bridging differences of belief. Highland's writings exemplify a commitment to secular/spiritual communication so greatly needed in our culture today.

The Free Thought Magazine

The Free Thought Magazine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Free thought
Languages : en
Pages : 840

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Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness

Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness PDF Author: Bernard Mandeville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Church history
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Faith and Free Thought

Faith and Free Thought PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Apologetics
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Faith and Free Thought

Faith and Free Thought PDF Author: Samuel Wilberforce
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Apologetics
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Freethought and Atheism in Central and Eastern Europe

Freethought and Atheism in Central and Eastern Europe PDF Author: Tomáš Bubík
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000039838
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This book provides the first comprehensive overview of atheism, secularity and non-religion in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast to scholarship that has focused on the ‘decline of religion’ and secularization theory, the book builds upon recent trends to focus on the ‘rise of non-religion’ itself. While the label of ‘post-communism’ might suggest a generalized perception of the region, this survey reveals that the precise developments in each country before, after and even during the communist era are surprisingly diverse. A multinational team of contributors provide interdisciplinary case studies covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This approach utilises perspectives from social and intellectual history in combination with sociology of religion in order to cover the historical development of secularity and secular thought, complemented with sociological data. The study is framed by methodological and analytical chapters. Offering an important geographical perspective to the study of freethought, atheism, secularity and non-religion, this wide-ranging book will be of significant interest to scholars of twentieth-century social and intellectual history, sociology of religion and non-religion, cultural and religious studies, philosophy and theology.

Faith and Free Thought

Faith and Free Thought PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781436843911
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Freethought and Freedom

Freethought and Freedom PDF Author: George H. Smith
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1944424385
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Liberty of conscience and freedom of thought are twin, core components of modern life in societies across the world. The ability to pursue one?s vision of the right and the good, coupled with liberty to pursue individual reason and enlightenment, helped produce so much of modern life that we may be apt to forget that libertarian philosophy was not dictated by Nature. Freethought and Freedom surveys the long history of religious and intellectual liberty, exploring their key ideas along the way.

Faith and Freedom

Faith and Freedom PDF Author: Michah Gottlieb
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199838240
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The recent renewal of the faith-reason debate has focused attention on earlier episodes in its history. One of its memorable highlights occurred during the Enlightenment, with the outbreak of the "Pantheism Controversy" between the eighteenth century Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the Christian Counter-Enlightenment thinker Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. While Mendelssohn argued that reason confirmed belief in a providential God and in an immortal soul, Jacobi claimed that its consistent application led ineluctably to atheism and fatalism. At present, there are two leading interpretations of Moses Mendelssohn's thought. One casts him as a Jewish traditionalist who draws on German philosophy to support his premodern Jewish beliefs, while the other portrays him as a secret Deist who seeks to encourage his fellow Jews to integrate into German society and so disingenuously defends Judaism to avoid arousing their opposition. By exploring the Pantheism Controversy and Mendelssohn's relation to his two greatest Jewish philosophical predecessors, the medieval Rabbi Moses Maimonides and the seventeenth century heretic Baruch Spinoza, Michah Gottlieb presents a new reading of Mendelssohn arguing that he defends Jewish religious concepts sincerely, but gives them a humanistic interpretation appropriate to life in a free, diverse modern society. Gottlieb argues that the faith-reason debate is best understood not primarily as an argument about metaphysical questions, such as whether or not God exists, but rather as a contest between two competing conceptions of human dignity and freedom. Mendelssohn, Gottlieb contends, gives expression to a humanistic religious perspective worthy of renewed consideration today.

Free Thought, Faith, and Science

Free Thought, Faith, and Science PDF Author: Roger Pullin
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 1478746939
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
FREE THOUGHT, FAITH AND SCIENCE: FINDING UNITY THROUGH SEEKING TRUTH By Roger Pullin. This book covers a hot topic – can faith, defined as personal belief and trust in God and not as a religious affiliation, ever be compatible with science? Dr. Roger Pullin argues forcefully that faith and science are complementary paths to truth, with all truthful spiritual insights and all truthful disclosures through mathematics and science coming from God, and that through faith and science we approach one whole body of truth. He writes as a marine biologist with a long career in research, teaching and consulting, mostly in tropical developing countries, and as a believer. He is an Associate Member of Christians in Science and the Society of Ordained Scientists, a Member of the Science and Religion Forum and a Member and former Elder of the Union Church of Manila, Philippines. Dr. Pullin draws together threads from works across theology and science and from personal experiences to offer fresh perspectives on what he calls Free Thought. Free Thought has capital letters to distinguish it from our basic thought about the practicalities of life - what to eat, what to wear, how to dodge traffic etc. Free Thought is not freethinking, as defined conventionally by an outcome of dissent from some religious or other established order. No process defined by a specific outcome can be called free. Free Thought can have any outcome, including agnosticism, atheism and faith. Free Thought is founded on free will. Everyone is free to explore all available information and to choose what to believe. No one knows what anyone else truly believes. Free Thought is truly free. Every human self is a unique combination of a material mind-body with a spiritual soul. Free Thought is the integrated and iterative processing of information from the material and spiritual realms, in one or more common nonmaterial formats, across an individual mind-soul interface. Free Thought connects the material and spiritual realms in every person. Our Free Thought and mind-soul interfaces make us the agents by which God and the spiritual force for evil can bring about change in the material realm. The laws of nature are not suspended to allow so-called miracles. We have free will. The material realm works through free process. From this perspective, Dr. Pullin reviews the human condition, faith, science, the battlefields on which we seek truth in the midst of lies and nonsense and make moral choices, the need for reformations in organized religion and revolutions in science and the prospects for faith-science unity. He recommends expansion of faith-science quest for truth, by scientific appraisals of subjective evidence from within believers and nonbelievers and by considering the implications of a spiritual realm for brain and consciousness research and a theory of everything. This book’s 11 chapters can be adapted as a series of lectures. It depicts a model and mechanisms for Free Thought in a 6-part Figure 1, the backdrop to which forms the cover design, and a synthetic Figure 2. Its 5 Appendices provide definitions of terms, summaries of the author’s beliefs and background, reviews of related literature and a questionnaire for readers. Its total length is 431 pages, plus a user-friendly Index.