Making Sense of God

Making Sense of God
Author: Timothy Keller
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2016-09-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0525954155

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.

Why Christian Faith Still Makes Sense

Why Christian Faith Still Makes Sense
Author: C. Stephen Evans
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780801096600

In recent years the Christian faith has been challenged by skeptics, including the New Atheists, who claim that belief in God is simply not reasonable. Here prominent Christian philosopher C. Stephen Evans offers a fresh, contemporary, and nuanced response. He makes the case for belief in a personal God through an exploration of natural "signs," which open our minds to theistic possibilities and foster belief in the Christian revelation. Evans then discusses why God's self-revelation is both authoritative and authentic. This sophisticated yet accessible book provides a clear account of the evidence for Christian faith, concluding that it still makes sense to believe.

Why We Need Religion

Why We Need Religion
Author: Stephen T. Asma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-05-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190469692

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.

No Sense of Obligation

No Sense of Obligation
Author: Matt Young
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2001-10-31
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0759610886

Some of the Praise for No Sense of Obligation . . . fascinating analysis of religious belief -- Steve Allen, author, composer, entertainer [A] tour de force of science and religion, reason and faith, denoting in clear and unmistakable language and rhetoric what science really reveals about the cosmos, the world, and ourselves. Michael Shermer, Publisher, Skeptic Magazine; Author, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science About the Book Rejecting belief without evidence, a scientist searches the scientific, theological, and philosophical literature for a sign from God--and finds him to be an allegory. This remarkable book, written in the laypersons language, leaves no room for unproven ideas and instead seeks hard evidence for the existence of God. The author, a sympathetic critic and observer of religion, finds instead a physical universe that exists reasonlessly. He attributes good and evil to biology, not to God. In place of theism, the author gives us the knowledge that the universe is intelligible and that we are grownups, responsible for ourselves. He finds salvation in the here and now, and no ultimate purpose in life, except as we define it.

Making Sense of Science and Religion

Making Sense of Science and Religion
Author: Joseph W Shane
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781681405773

The authors of Making Sense of Science and Religion believe that addressing interactions between science and religion is part of all science educators' collective job-- and that this is the book that will help you facilitate discussion when the topic of religion comes up. Designed for teachers at all grade levels, the book will help you anticipate and respond to students' questions-- and help students reconcile their religious beliefs even as you delve into topics such as evolution, geochronology, genetics, the origin of the universe, and climate change. The book is divided into three parts: 1.Historical and cultural context, plus a framework for addressing science-religion issues in a legal, constitutional manner. 2.Guidance on teaching specific scientific concepts at every grade level: elementary, middle, and high school science, as well as college and informal science settings. 3.Advice for engaging families, administrators, school boards, legislators and policy makers, and faith communities. The book' s authors are all personally and professionally invested in the subject. They are a mix of K- 12 teachers, college professors, and experts from organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. They know that teaching about the interaction between science and religion is not easy. But they also know that educators have an ethical obligation to minimize the perceived conflict between science and religion. As the authors write, " When students hear a consistent message during science instruction-- that they can learn science while maintaining their religious beliefs-- they are much more willing to learn regardless of messages to the contrary that they might hear outside of your classroom."

The Reason Why

The Reason Why
Author: Mark Mittelberg
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 141435259X

Everyone wants to believe in something beyond or someone bigger than themselves, but nobody wants to be duped. In order to provide answers to people who are seeking the truth, Mark Mittelberg updates for today the classic book by Robert Laidlaw that sold millions, The Reason Why. This short book gives clear, concise reasons why belief in God makes sense.

Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not

Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not
Author: Robert N. McCauley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2013-11
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0199341540

A comparison of the cognitive foundations of religion and science and an argument that religion is cognitively natural and that science is cognitively unnatural.

The Sanity of Belief

The Sanity of Belief
Author: Simon Edwards
Publisher: SPCK
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2021-02-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0281084904

We've all heard the arguments that Christianity is irrelevant, irrational and even immoral. But what if the Christian faith makes sense of all that matters? In this thoughtful, engaging book, Simon Edwards challenges the assumptions that may lead us to reject a faith and doubt something that we've never really had the chance to understand in the first place. From our need for meaning and significance, to our desires for truth, goodness, love and hope, he explores the things that matter to us as human beings and shows us why the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ might just make sense of them all. The Sanity of Belief is a fresh take on apologetics, faith and doubt, that will leave you with a stronger understanding of Christian belief and how it relates to today's world. It is ideal for anyone looking for a clear, down-to-earth introduction to Christianity, or for those wanting to reaffirm the foundations on which their faith is based.

Unapologetic

Unapologetic
Author: Francis Spufford
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0062300482

Francis Spufford's Unapologetic is a wonderfully pugnacious defense of Christianity. Refuting critics such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the "new atheist" crowd, Spufford, a former atheist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, argues that Christianity is recognizable, drawing on the deep and deeply ordinary vocabulary of human feeling, satisfying those who believe in it by offering a ruthlessly realistic account of the grown-up dignity of Christian experience. Fans of C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright, Marilynne Robinson, Mary Karr, Diana Butler Bass, Rob Bell, and James Martin will appreciate Spufford's crisp, lively, and abashedly defiant thesis. Unapologetic is a book for believers who are fed up with being patronized, for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century, and for anyone who feels there is something indefinably wrong, literalistic, anti-imaginative and intolerant about the way the atheist case is now being made.

God's Mechanics

God's Mechanics
Author: Guy Consolmagno
Publisher: Wiley + ORM
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2010-12-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1118041100

With an “adroit and self-effacing style,” a Catholic brother, astronomer and physicist explains how scientists and engineers make sense of religion. In God's Mechanics, Brother Guy tells the stories of those who identify with the scientific mindset—so-called “techies”—while practicing religion. A self-decribed techie, astronomer, physicist and Director of the Vatican Observatory, Brother Guy shares some classic philosophical reflections, as well as his interviews with dozens of fellow techies, and his own personal take on his Catholic beliefs to provide, like a set of “worked out sample problems,” the hard data on the challenges and joys of embracing a life of faith as a techie. And he also gives a roadmap of the traps that can befall an unwary techie believer. With lively prose and wry humor, Brother Guy shows how he not only believes in God but gives religion an honored place alongside science in his life. This book offers an engaging look at how—and why—scientists and those with technological leanings can hold profound, “unprovable” religious beliefs while working in highly empirical fields. Through his own experience and interviews with other scientists and engineers who profess faith, Brother Guy explores how religious beliefs and practices make sense to those who are deeply rooted in the world of technology. “Brother Guy Consolmagno speaks in the softest, sanest voice imaginable as he enters the current firestorm of opinion re science and religion. His engaging commentary exposes the mindset of a true ‘techie’—but one who equates science with a sacred act.” —Dava Sobel, author, Galileo’s Daughter