Monotheism and Human Nature

Monotheism and Human Nature PDF Author: Andrew M. Bailey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108968023
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
The main question of this Element is how the existence, supremacy, and uniqueness of an almighty and immaterial God bear on our own nature. It aims to uncover lessons about what we are by thinking about what God might be. A dominant theme is that Abrahamic monotheism is a surprisingly hospitable framework within which to defend and develop the view that we are wholly material beings. But the resulting materialism cannot be of any standard variety. It demands revisions and twists on the usual views. We can indeed learn about ourselves by learning about God. One thing we learn is that, though we are indeed wholly material beings, we're not nearly as ordinary as we might seem.

Monotheism and Human Nature

Monotheism and Human Nature PDF Author: Andrew M. Bailey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108968023
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Get Book Here

Book Description
The main question of this Element is how the existence, supremacy, and uniqueness of an almighty and immaterial God bear on our own nature. It aims to uncover lessons about what we are by thinking about what God might be. A dominant theme is that Abrahamic monotheism is a surprisingly hospitable framework within which to defend and develop the view that we are wholly material beings. But the resulting materialism cannot be of any standard variety. It demands revisions and twists on the usual views. We can indeed learn about ourselves by learning about God. One thing we learn is that, though we are indeed wholly material beings, we're not nearly as ordinary as we might seem.

Monotheism and Human Nature

Monotheism and Human Nature PDF Author: Andrew M. Bailey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108964401
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
The main question of this Element is how the existence, supremacy, and uniqueness of an almighty and immaterial God bear on our own nature. It aims to uncover lessons about what we are by thinking about what God might be. A dominant theme is that Abrahamic monotheism is a surprisingly hospitable framework within which to defend and develop the view that we are wholly material beings. But the resulting materialism cannot be of any standard variety. It demands revisions and twists on the usual views. We can indeed learn about ourselves by learning about God. One thing we learn is that, though we are indeed wholly material beings, we're not nearly as ordinary as we might seem.

God

God PDF Author: Reza Aslan
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0553394738
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of Zealot explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle

The Good Book of Human Nature

The Good Book of Human Nature PDF Author: Carel van Schaik
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465074707
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
"In The Good Book of Human Nature, evolutionary anthropologist Carel van Schaik and historian Kai Michel advance a new view of Homo sapiens' cultural evolution. The Bible, they argue, was written to make sense of the single greatest change in history: the transition from egalitarian hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. Religion arose as a strategy to cope with the unprecedented levels of epidemic disease, violence, inequality, and injustice that confronted us when we abandoned the bush--and which still confront us today, "--Amazon.com.

One True God

One True God PDF Author: Rodney Stark
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691115009
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Western history would be unrecognizable had it not been for people who believed in One True God. There would have been wars, but no religious wars. There would have been moral codes, but no Commandments. Had the Jews been polytheists, they would today be only another barely remembered people, less important, but just as extinct as the Babylonians. Had Christians presented Jesus to the Greco-Roman world as ''another'' God, their faith would long since have gone the way of Mithraism. And surely Islam would never have made it out of the desert had Muhammad not removed Allah from the context of Arab paganism and proclaimed him as the only God. The three great monotheisms changed everything. With his customary clarity and vigor, Rodney Stark explains how and why monotheism has such immense power both to unite and to divide. Why and how did Jews, Christians, and Muslims missionize, and when and why did their efforts falter? Why did both Christianity and Islam suddenly become less tolerant of Jews late in the eleventh century, prompting outbursts of mass murder? Why were the Jewish massacres by Christians concentrated in the cities along the Rhine River, and why did the pogroms by Muslims take place mainly in Granada? How could the Jews persist so long as a minority faith, able to withstand intense pressures to convert? Why did they sometimes assimilate? In the final chapter, Stark also examines the American experience to show that it is possible for committed monotheists to sustain norms of civility toward one another. A sweeping social history of religion, One True God shows how the great monotheisms shaped the past and created the modern world.

Islam

Islam PDF Author: Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788187570295
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Although a building is composed of many parts, what really hold up the entire structure is its pillars. If they are strong, the whole structure will be sound. If they are weak, the entire edifice will crumble. The book stresses that those which support the edifice of Islam are of immense strength, but they must first of all be raised up by its adherents if they are to support its structure.

Gods and Humans in the Ancient Near East

Gods and Humans in the Ancient Near East PDF Author: Tyson L. Putthoff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108490549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Gods have always lived among humans. But long ago, they also lived inside us, sharing their nature with mere mortals.

Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran

Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran PDF Author: Lady Ethel Stefana Drower
Publisher: Brill Archive
ISBN:
Category : Mandaeans
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description


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.

Eternity in Their Hearts

Eternity in Their Hearts PDF Author: Don Richardson
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459606981
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Startling Evidence of Belief in the One True God in Hundreds of Cultures Throughout the World Has the God who prepared the gospel for all people groups also prepared all people groups for the gospel? Don Richardson, author of the best - selling book Peace Child, has studied cultures throughout the world and found within hundreds of them startling evidence of belief in the one true God. In Eternity in Their Hearts, Richardson gives fascinating, real - life examples of ways people have exhibited in their histories terms and concepts that have prepared them for the gospel. Read how Pachacuti, the Inca king who founded Machu Picchu, the majestic fortress in Peru, accomplished something far more significant than merely building fortresses, temples or monuments. He sought, reached out and found a God far greater than anypopulargod of his own culture. And there have been others throughout the world, likehim, who2vedto receive the blessing of the gospel. Get ready to be amazed at these intriguing examples of how God uses redemptive analogies to bring all men to Himself, bearing out the truth from Ecclesiastes that God has also set eternity in the hearts of men.