The Puzzle of Religion

The Puzzle of Religion PDF Author: Douglas Hufschmid
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781794109117
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
It's fairly easy to see the ways in which science has advanced over the years, forming truths and laws that many people accept worldwide. Yet most religions resist change, and, in turn, most religions remain backward and divisive. Is there potential for better human unity if we demystify the puzzle of religion as we have demystified other puzzles? Douglas Hufschmid explores these topics and more in The Puzzle of Religion. With astute investigations into contemporary religious beliefs, Hufschmid seeks to unravel the ways in which religion must compete with other aspects of modern life, such as science, the Internet, and Hollywood. The Puzzle of Religion dives deep into the fascinating contradiction between scientific advancement and religious stagnation.The better we can understand our desire for advances within science, the better we can understand why the world's religions lack similar advances. Is it possible to develop a worldwide consensus on religion? For every human to hold the same set of truths-as is the case with science? As The Puzzle of Religion unveils, this consensus could be the missing piece in unity. It could be the last piece in the puzzle for world peace.

The Puzzle of Religion

The Puzzle of Religion PDF Author: Douglas Hufschmid
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781794109117
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Get Book Here

Book Description
It's fairly easy to see the ways in which science has advanced over the years, forming truths and laws that many people accept worldwide. Yet most religions resist change, and, in turn, most religions remain backward and divisive. Is there potential for better human unity if we demystify the puzzle of religion as we have demystified other puzzles? Douglas Hufschmid explores these topics and more in The Puzzle of Religion. With astute investigations into contemporary religious beliefs, Hufschmid seeks to unravel the ways in which religion must compete with other aspects of modern life, such as science, the Internet, and Hollywood. The Puzzle of Religion dives deep into the fascinating contradiction between scientific advancement and religious stagnation.The better we can understand our desire for advances within science, the better we can understand why the world's religions lack similar advances. Is it possible to develop a worldwide consensus on religion? For every human to hold the same set of truths-as is the case with science? As The Puzzle of Religion unveils, this consensus could be the missing piece in unity. It could be the last piece in the puzzle for world peace.

The Puzzle of Christianity

The Puzzle of Christianity PDF Author: Peter Vardy
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 000820425X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
An excellent overview of Christianity, suitable for students (and teachers!) embarking on the new GCSE and ‘A’-Level Religious Studies specifications.

The Puzzle of Religion

The Puzzle of Religion PDF Author: Louis J. Hammann
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780819103093
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description


The Puzzle of God

The Puzzle of God PDF Author: Peter Vardy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317455037
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The Puzzle of God takes a distinctive approach to the complex issues surrounding what it means to claim that God exists. It examines the different ideas of God in common use today, and applies these to the central areas of belief, such as eternal life, prayer, miracles, and talk of God's love, omnipotence and omniscience.

The Role of Religion in History

The Role of Religion in History PDF Author: George Walsh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351474847
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
This comprehensive survey of religion and its profound effects on history provides a historical context for in-depth analysis of theological, social, and political themes in which religion plays a major role. George Walsh first traces the rise and impact of primitive religions. He looks at Indian traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism and analyzes the Semitic tradition of Judaism and Christianity and the evolving conception of a personal God. He discusses the history and chief doctrines of Islam as well, with its fundamental respect for desert tribal values and its emphasis on both the authority of God and the brotherhood of believers. Walsh then compares Judaism and Christianity. He sees Judaism as marked by a profound ambivalence between the values of tribal, nomadic desert life and the values of urban civilization, individualism, and collectivism. Judaism is "this-worldly," but the Christian worldview is "other-wordly." Walsh closes with a timely discussion of the ethical, political, and economic teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, focusing specifically on their differing attitudes toward sex, reproduction, and marriage; their basic views of mind and body; and man's relation to God.

Making Sense of the Sacred

Making Sense of the Sacred PDF Author: James L. Rowell
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
ISBN: 150646808X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This work argues that there is a universal message that can be found in the study of religions. It offers a comprehensive examination of religions and their meaning, bound by the hope and affirmation that in some way they are universally connected. It affirms a universalism by wisdom, which contends that a moral and spiritual wisdom can be found in many of the world's religions.

Why We Need Religion

Why We Need Religion PDF Author: Stephen T. Asma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190469692
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder and the sublime--we can feel the sacred depths of nature--but there are many forms of human suffering and vulnerability that are beyond the reach of help from science. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike secular authors who praise religion's ethical and civilizing function, Asma argues that its core value lies in its emotionally therapeutic power. No theorist of religion has failed to notice the importance of emotions in spiritual and ritual life, but truly systematic research has only recently delivered concrete data on the neurology, psychology, and anthropology of the emotional systems. This very recent "affective turn" has begun to map out a powerful territory of embodied cognition. Why We Need Religion incorporates new data from these affective sciences into the philosophy of religion. It goes on to describe the way in which religion manages those systems--rage, play, lust, care, grief, and so on. Finally, it argues that religion is still the best cultural apparatus for doing this adaptive work. In short, the book is a Darwinian defense of religious emotions and the cultural systems that manage them.

The Human Puzzle

The Human Puzzle PDF Author: David G. Myers
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description


Faces in the Clouds

Faces in the Clouds PDF Author: Stewart Elliott Guthrie
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195356802
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Religion is universal human culture. No phenomenon is more widely shared or more intensely studied, yet there is no agreement on what religion is. Now, in Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie provides a provocative definition of religion in a bold and persuasive new theory. Guthrie says religion can best be understood as systematic anthropomorphism--that is, the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things and events. Many writers see anthropomorphism as common or even universal in religion, but few think it is central. To Guthrie, however, it is fundamental. Religion, he writes, consists of seeing the world as humanlike. As Guthrie shows, people find a wide range of humanlike beings plausible: Gods, spirits, abominable snowmen, HAL the computer, Chiquita Banana. We find messages in random events such as earthquakes, weather, and traffic accidents. We say a fire "rages," a storm "wreaks vengeance," and waters "lie still." Guthrie says that our tendency to find human characteristics in the nonhuman world stems from a deep-seated perceptual strategy: in the face of pervasive (if mostly unconscious) uncertainty about what we see, we bet on the most meaningful interpretation we can. If we are in the woods and see a dark shape that might be a bear or a boulder, for example, it is good policy to think it is a bear. If we are mistaken, we lose little, and if we are right, we gain much. So, Guthrie writes, in scanning the world we always look for what most concerns us--livings things, and especially, human ones. Even animals watch for human attributes, as when birds avoid scarecrows. In short, we all follow the principle--better safe than sorry. Marshalling a wealth of evidence from anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, theology, advertising, literature, art, and animal behavior, Guthrie offers a fascinating array of examples to show how this perceptual strategy pervades secular life and how it characterizes religious experience. Challenging the very foundations of religion, Faces in the Clouds forces us to take a new look at this fundamental element of human life.

How God Becomes Real

How God Becomes Real PDF Author: T.M. Luhrmann
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211981
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.