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 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.

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.

Reality’s Fugue

Reality’s Fugue PDF Author: F. Samuel Brainard
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271080558
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Science, religion, philosophy: these three categories of thought have organized humankind’s search for meaning from time immemorial. Reality’s Fugue presents a compelling case that these ways of understanding, often seen as competing, are part of a larger puzzle that cannot be rendered by one account of reality alone. This book begins with an overview of the concept of reality and the philosophical difficulties associated with attempts to account for it through any single worldview. By clarifying the differences among first-person, third-person, and dualist understandings of reality, F. Samuel Brainard repurposes the three predominant ways of making sense of those differences: exclusionist (only one worldview can be right), inclusivist (viewing other worldviews through the lens of one in order to incorporate them all, and thus distorting them), and pluralist or relativist (holding that there are no universals, and truth is relative). His alternative mode of understanding uses Douglas Hofstadter’s metaphor of a musical fugue that allows different “voices” and “melodies” of worldviews to coexist in counterpoint and conversation, while each remains distinct, with none privileged above the others. Approaching reality in this way, Brainard argues, opens up the possibility for a multivoiced perspective that can overcome the skeptical challenges that metaphysical positions face. Engagingly argued by a lifelong scholar of philosophy and global religions, this edifying and accessible exploration of the nature of reality addresses deeply meaningful questions about belief, reconciliation, and being.

The Reluctant Messenger of Science and Religion

The Reluctant Messenger of Science and Religion PDF Author: Stephen W. Boston
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1462065589
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Science teaches evolution. Genesis describes creation. Christianity, Judaism, and Sufism teach resurrection. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism teach reincarnation. The Reluctant Messenger of Science and Religion resolves these paradoxes. Chester and Lydia meet in a debate. One wins. One loses. Neither are ever the same. Lydia discovers a secret from her past that destroyed her family. She tries to ignore it, but her nightmares won't let her. Chester's greed for gold and revenge lead him to ancient knowledge which the powers of darkness fight to suppress. When the information last came to light, thousands died. Somehow, Chester must safely reveal it to the world. "This is the most inspirational story I have ever read! Honest!" Clint Hoadley re: www.reluctant-messenger.com

Big Gods

Big Gods PDF Author: Ara Norenzayan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691169748
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Examines how the belief in gods has lead to cooperation and sometimes conflict between groups. The author also looks at how some cooperative societies have developed without belief in gods.

The Attraction of Religion

The Attraction of Religion PDF Author: D. Jason Slone
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472531728
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Religion is an evolutionary puzzle. It involves beliefs in counterfactual worlds and engagement in costly rituals. Yet religion is widespread across all human cultures and eras. This begs the question, why are so many people attracted to religion? In The Attraction of Religion, essays by leading scholars in evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and religious studies demonstrate how religion may be related to evolutionary adaptations because religious commitments involve fitness-enhancing behaviours that promote reproduction, kinship, and social solidarity. Could it be that religion is wide-spread, at least in the modern world, because it helps to facilitate cooperative breeding? International contributors explore the philosophical and theoretical arguments for and against the use of costly signalling, sexual selection, and related theories to explain religion, and empirical findings that support or disconfirm such claims. The first book-length treatment that focuses specifically on costly signalling, sexual selection, and related evolutionary theories to explain religion, The Attraction of Religion will be an important contribution to the field and will be of interest to researchers in the fields of evolutionary psychology, religion and science, the psychology of religion, and anthropology of religion.

Religion in Human Evolution

Religion in Human Evolution PDF Author: Robert N. Bellah
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674252934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 777

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. “Of Bellah’s brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly...Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book’s subject as well as its substance, and that is ‘magisterial.’” —Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review “Religion in Human Evolution is a magnum opus founded on careful research and immersed in the ‘reflective judgment’ of one of our best thinkers and writers.” —Richard L. Wood, Commonweal

Why We Need Religion

Why We Need Religion PDF Author: Stephen T. Asma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190469676
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Religion appears to be about God, messiahs, churchgoing, and morality, but that is only the appearance. It is really about lust, rage, grief, love and the other core emotions. Why We Need Religion is about the way religion successfully manages human emotions, for the good of the individual and the group.

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.