Making Sense of God

Making Sense of God

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  • Author: Timothy Keller
  • Publisher: Penguin
  • ISBN: 0525954155
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 338

We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.


A Lapsed Anarchist's Approach to The Power of Beliefs in Business

A Lapsed Anarchist's Approach to The Power of Beliefs in Business

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  • Author: Ari Weinzweig
  • Publisher: Zingerman's Press
  • ISBN: 0989349462
  • Category :
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 600

Ari’s new book is the culmination of a lifetime of learning and thirty four years in business, the last three of which have been spent intensively studying, reflecting on, and writing about the critical role of beliefs in the businesses and organizations of which we’re a part. The fruits of that labor are now available in this new 600-page book. We could tell you more about what's in the book but we think John U. Bacon, author of the New York Times' bestseller, Endzone: The Rise, Fall and Return of Michigan Football, said it better than we ever could! “Some business leaders know practice. Some know theory. Ari Weinzweig is one of the few who knows both. He has built a famously successful organization, while giving it more thought than do the business gurus who merely philosophize about such things. The insights Ari shares here are both deeply perceptive and highly practical, from the ideas of Howard Zinn, Viktor Frankl and Anais Nin on one page, to the importance of learning your employees’ names on the next. Like its author, this book is uncommonly smart, helpful, and just plain fun.”


Talk about Beliefs

Talk about Beliefs

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  • Author: Mark Crimmins
  • Publisher: MIT Press
  • ISBN: 9780262031851
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 246

Talk About Beliefs presents a new account of beliefs and of practices of reporting them that yields solutions to foundational problems in the philosophies of language and mind. Crimmins connects issues in mental representation with semantic issues in language for talking about cognition to provide a theoretically fruitful account of belief and belief reports that is logically consistent with intuitive judgments of such notorious problems as Frege's puzzles about substitution and cognitive significance, Quine's puzzle about de re, Castaneda and Perry's puzzle about indexical beliefs, and other more complicated variations. Crimmins's account relies on, and to some extent vindicates, the traditions of representationalism in the philosophy of mind and of structured propositional semantics. In reporting a person's beliefs, Crimmins argues, we systematically make claims not only about the propositional content of the beliefs but also about cognitive representations. He elaborates and defends this proposal by providing a careful assessment of pragmatic and semantic contributions to the claims expressed in belief reports. Crimmins's thesis forms a promising framework within which to approach issues in the philosophy of mind such as tacit belief (do you believe that pencils do not eat?), criteria for having concepts (do blind persons have the concept of red?), and restrictions of acquaintance on objects of thought (can you believe something about the first person born in the next century?).


Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God

Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God

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  • Author: Frank Schaeffer
  • Publisher: Regina Orthodox Press,Csi
  • ISBN: 9781928653998
  • Category : Belief and doubt
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

Caught between the beauty of his grandchildren and grief over a friend's death, Frank Schaeffer finds himself simultaneously believing and not believing in God--an atheist who prays. Schaeffer wrestles with faith and disbelief, sharing his innermost thoughts. He writes as an imperfect son, husband and grandfather whose love for his family, art and life trumps the ugly theologies of an angry God and the atheist vision of a cold, meaningless universe.


When God Talks Back

When God Talks Back

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  • Author: T.M. Luhrmann
  • Publisher: Vintage
  • ISBN: 0307277275
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 466

A New York Times Notable Book A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012 A bold approach to understanding the American evangelical experience from an anthropological and psychological perspective by one of the country's most prominent anthropologists. Through a series of intimate, illuminating interviews with various members of the Vineyard, an evangelical church with hundreds of congregations across the country, Tanya Luhrmann leaps into the heart of evangelical faith. Combined with scientific research that studies the effect that intensely practiced prayer can have on the mind, When God Talks Back examines how normal, sensible people—from college students to accountants to housewives, all functioning perfectly well within our society—can attest to having the signs and wonders of the supernatural become as quotidian and as ordinary as laundry. Astute, sensitive, and extraordinarily measured in its approach to the interface between science and religion, Luhrmann's book is sure to generate as much conversation as it will praise.


Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot

Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot

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  • Author: Seth Andrews
  • Publisher: Outskirts Press
  • ISBN: 9781977250827
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 216

Seth Andrews wasn't an idiot during his thirty years as an evangelical Christian. He wasn't unintelligent, nor did his IQ shift when he ultimately left religion entirely. He considered himself thoughtful, moral, reasonable, and at least as smart as the average person. In other words, he wasn't an idiot. Yet strangely, he often sounded like one. In any other context, Christians would likely smirk, scoff, or recoil at many of their "normal" beliefs and practices: reenacted Easter crucifixions, eating monthly communion "flesh," singing hymns about being washed in blood, and the embrace of a Bible containing scripture verses about golden hemorrhoids, apocalypse dragons, and human sacrifice, So what gives? Are these notions embraced only because they're familiar? Do they make any sense? And do they cause otherwise reasonable people to sound like idiots? Seth Andrews admits that, for himself, the answer was a definite yes. For everyone else? Read the book and decide.


Useful Belief

Useful Belief

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  • Author: Chris Helder
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 0730327418
  • Category : Business & Economics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 112

Positive thinking has had its time — the new way of overcoming life's challenges is USEFUL BELIEF Useful Belief turns the "be positive" industry upside down with a fresh and modern approach to achievement. Sometimes things in life are not positive. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. If you've had a nightmare of a year, the last thing you want to hear is "Be positive!" Instead, you need an actual strategy to dig yourself out, and a truly useful guidebook to show you where to go next. This is that guidebook. Through the engaging tale of a business traveller and the three significant encounters on his journey, this book takes you on a journey of your own — to self awareness, and an improved approach to business, parenting and relationships. You'll learn how thinking "useful" is better than thinking "positive", and you'll uncover the utility of your past, present and future challenges. You'll undergo a major shift in the way you solve your problems, and you'll learn how to navigate your way out of ambiguity and toward success. If you have challenges at work right now, just deciding to "be positive" will not fix them. Useful belief and strategy will. This book shows you how to frame your challenges to make them surmountable, and how to formulate an action plan for getting where you need to be. Learn a simple self-awareness strategy that turns problems into plans Discover the truth about "truth" and the importance of "useful" Go beyond positivity to actually fix personal and professional problems Uncover the valuable lessons you've learned from the challenges you've overcome Everything that has ever happened to you has happened for a reason. It doesn't matter if it's true, because it's useful to believe it is true. Useful Belief leads you toward the self-awareness and strategic outlook you need to achieve personal fulfillment and professional success.


The Year of Living Biblically

The Year of Living Biblically

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  • Author: A. J. Jacobs
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster
  • ISBN: 0743291484
  • Category : Biography & Autobiography
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 416

Documents the author's quest to live one year in literal compliance with biblical rules, from being fruitful and multiplying to growing a beard and avoiding mixed-fiber clothing.


Jesus > Religion

Jesus > Religion

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  • Author: Jefferson Bethke
  • Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
  • ISBN: 1400205409
  • Category : Self-Help
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 241

Abandon dead, dry, religious rule-keeping and embrace the promise of being truly known and deeply loved. Jefferson Bethke burst into the cultural conversation with a passionate, provocative poem titled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus." The 4-minute video became an overnight sensation, with 7 million YouTube views in its first 48 hours (and 23+ million in a year). Bethke's message clearly struck a chord with believers and nonbelievers alike, triggering an avalanche of responses running the gamut from encouraged to enraged. In his New York Times bestseller Jesus > Religion, Bethke unpacks similar contrasts that he drew in the poem--highlighting the difference between teeth gritting and grace, law and love, performance and peace, despair, and hope. With refreshing candor, he delves into the motivation behind his message, beginning with the unvarnished tale of his own plunge from the pinnacle of a works-based, fake-smile existence that sapped his strength and led him down a path of destructive behavior. Along the way, Bethke gives you the tools you need to: Humbly and prayerfully open your mind Understand Jesus for all that he is View the church from a brand-new perspective Bethke is quick to acknowledge that he's not a pastor or theologian, but simply an ordinary, twenty-something who cried out for a life greater than the one for which he had settled. On this journey, Bethke discovered the real Jesus, who beckoned him with love beyond the props of false religion. Praise for Jesus > Religion: "Jeff's book will make you stop and listen to a voice in your heart that may have been drowned out by the noise of religion. Listen to that voice, then follow it--right to the feet of Jesus." --Bob Goff, author of New York Times bestsellers Love Does and Everybody, Always "The book you hold in your hands is Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz meets C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity meets Augustine's Confessions. This book is going to awaken an entire generation to Jesus and His grace." --Derwin L. Gray, lead pastor of Transformation Church, author of Limitless Life: Breaking Free from the Labels That Hold You Back


The Believing Brain

The Believing Brain

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  • Author: Michael Shermer
  • Publisher: Macmillan
  • ISBN: 1429972610
  • Category : Psychology
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 400

The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths. Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.