Agnostic-Ish

Agnostic-Ish
Author: Josh Buoy
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2016-04-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9780692710517

This is a book about science, religion, and the world in between. I was born into a Christian family, but fell out of religion and in love with the scientific method. I had little need of faith, I thought, when science could tell me so much more about the world, and ask so little of me in return. But as I aged into young adulthood, a new chapter of my story began. Did I really know why I believed what I believed? How could I be so certain of my convictions when I hadn't even honestly considered the evidence? This book traces my journey through the furthest reaches of thought, a journey that took me through the realms of psychology, biology, physics, and belief. Could I find a place for faith in the modern world? Or was I right to cast it off as I did?

The Atheist Muslim

The Atheist Muslim
Author: Ali A. Rizvi
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2016-11-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250094445

In much of the Muslim world, religion is the central foundation upon which family, community, morality, and identity are built. The inextricable embedment of religion in Muslim culture has forced a new generation of non-believing Muslims to face the heavy costs of abandoning their parents’ religion: disowned by their families, marginalized from their communities, imprisoned, or even sentenced to death by their governments. Struggling to reconcile the Muslim society he was living in as a scientist and physician and the religion he was being raised in, Ali A. Rizvi eventually loses his faith. Discovering that he is not alone, he moves to North America and promises to use his new freedom of speech to represent the voices that are usually quashed before reaching the mainstream media—the Atheist Muslim. In The Atheist Muslim, we follow Rizvi as he finds himself caught between two narrative voices he cannot relate to: extreme Islam and anti-Muslim bigotry in a post-9/11 world. The Atheist Muslim recounts the journey that allows Rizvi to criticize Islam—as one should be able to criticize any set of ideas—without demonizing his entire people. Emotionally and intellectually compelling, his personal story outlines the challenges of modern Islam and the factors that could help lead it toward a substantive, progressive reformation.

Unfollow

Unfollow
Author: Megan Phelps-Roper
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-10-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0374715815

The activist and TED speaker Megan Phelps-Roper reveals her life growing up in the most hated family in America At the age of five, Megan Phelps-Roper began protesting homosexuality and other alleged vices alongside fellow members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Founded by her grandfather and consisting almost entirely of her extended family, the tiny group would gain worldwide notoriety for its pickets at military funerals and celebrations of death and tragedy. As Phelps-Roper grew up, she saw that church members were close companions and accomplished debaters, applying the logic of predestination and the language of the King James Bible to everyday life with aplomb—which, as the church’s Twitter spokeswoman, she learned to do with great skill. Soon, however, dialogue on Twitter caused her to begin doubting the church’s leaders and message: If humans were sinful and fallible, how could the church itself be so confident about its beliefs? As she digitally jousted with critics, she started to wonder if sometimes they had a point—and then she began exchanging messages with a man who would help change her life. A gripping memoir of escaping extremism and falling in love, Unfollow relates Phelps-Roper’s moral awakening, her departure from the church, and how she exchanged the absolutes she grew up with for new forms of warmth and community. Rich with suspense and thoughtful reflection, Phelps-Roper’s life story exposes the dangers of black-and-white thinking and the need for true humility in a time of angry polarization.

Interpretable Machine Learning

Interpretable Machine Learning
Author: Christoph Molnar
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020
Genre: Artificial intelligence
ISBN: 0244768528

This book is about making machine learning models and their decisions interpretable. After exploring the concepts of interpretability, you will learn about simple, interpretable models such as decision trees, decision rules and linear regression. Later chapters focus on general model-agnostic methods for interpreting black box models like feature importance and accumulated local effects and explaining individual predictions with Shapley values and LIME. All interpretation methods are explained in depth and discussed critically. How do they work under the hood? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How can their outputs be interpreted? This book will enable you to select and correctly apply the interpretation method that is most suitable for your machine learning project.

The Antitrust Paradox

The Antitrust Paradox
Author: Robert Bork
Publisher:
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2021-02-22
Genre:
ISBN: 9781736089712

The most important book on antitrust ever written. It shows how antitrust suits adversely affect the consumer by encouraging a costly form of protection for inefficient and uncompetitive small businesses.

Global Trends 2040

Global Trends 2040
Author: National Intelligence Council
Publisher: Cosimo Reports
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2021-03
Genre:
ISBN: 9781646794973

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

How to Be an Atheist (Foreword by J. P. Moreland)

How to Be an Atheist (Foreword by J. P. Moreland)
Author: Mitch Stokes
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2016-02-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 143354301X

Atheists love to challenge the beliefs of Christians, emphasizing the importance of skepticism for all truly “free-thinking" people. However, more often than not, atheists actually aren’t skeptical enough. In this book, philosopher Mitch Stokes demonstrates that atheists’ confidence in the supposed God-killing “facts” of science, math, and their own reason all too often lulls them into a mind-set that leaves their own worldview largely unquestioned. Making the case for a more complete skepticism that questions the assumptions of Christians and non-Christians, this book winsomely shows how Christianity offers the best explanation for the world, humanity, and morality.

Immunotherapy – A Novel Facet of Modern Therapeutics

Immunotherapy – A Novel Facet of Modern Therapeutics
Author: Sujata P. Sawarkar
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2020-12-16
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9811590389

This book illustrates the significance and relevance of immunotherapy in modern-day therapeutics. Focusing on the application of immunotherapy in oncology, neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases, it discusses the drug delivery systems, and pre-clinical and clinical methodologies for immunotherapy-based drugs. It also comprehensively reviews various aspects of immunotherapy, such as regulatory affairs, quality control, safety, and pharmacovigilance. Further, the book discusses the in vitro validation of therapeutic strategies prior to patient application and management of immunotherapy-related side effects and presents case studies demonstrating the design and development (pre-clinical to clinical) of immunotherapy for various diseases. It also describes various design considerations and the scale-up synthesis of immunotherapeutics and screening methods. Lastly, it explores the important aspect of cost-effectiveness and rational immunotherapy strategies.

Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholics Anonymous
Author: Bill W.
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2014-09-04
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0698176936

A 75th anniversary e-book version of the most important and practical self-help book ever written, Alcoholics Anonymous. Here is a special deluxe edition of a book that has changed millions of lives and launched the modern recovery movement: Alcoholics Anonymous. This edition not only reproduces the original 1939 text of Alcoholics Anonymous, but as a special bonus features the complete 1941 Saturday Evening Post article “Alcoholics Anonymous” by journalist Jack Alexander, which, at the time, did as much as the book itself to introduce millions of seekers to AA’s program. Alcoholics Anonymous has touched and transformed myriad lives, and finally appears in a volume that honors its posterity and impact.

Sadhguru, More Than a Life

Sadhguru, More Than a Life
Author: Arundhathi Subramaniam
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2010
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 067008512X

‘The thirst to be boundless is not created by you; it is just life longing for itself.’ —Sadhguru This is the extraordinary story of Sadhguru—a young agnostic who turned yogi, a wild motorcyclist who turned mystic, a sceptic who turned spiritual guide. Pulsating with his razor-sharp intelligence, bracing wit and modern-day vocabulary, the book empowers you to explore your spiritual self and could well change your life. It seeks to re-create the life journey of a man who combines rationality with mysticism, irreverence with compassion, ancient wisdom with a provocatively contemporary outlook and a deep knowledge of the self with a contagious love of life. Described as ‘a profound mystic, visionary humanitarian and prominent spiritual leader of our times', he is equally at home in a satsangh in rural Tamil Nadu as at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In his early years, Jaggi Vasudev (or Sadhguru as he is now known) was a chronic truant, a boisterous prankster, and later a lover of motorbikes and fast cars. It is evident that the same urgency, passion and vitality echo in his spiritual pursuits to this day, from his creation of the historic Dhyanalinga—the mission of three lifetimes—to his approach as a guru. In Sadhguru's view, faith and reason, spirituality and science, the sacred and the material, cannot be divided into easy binaries. He sees people as ‘spiritual beings dabbling with the material rather than the reverse’, and liberation as the fundamental longing in every form of life. Truth for him is a living experience instead of a destination, a conclusion, or a matter of metaphysical speculation. The possibility of self-realization, he strongly believes, is available to all. Drawing upon extended conversations with Sadhguru, interviews with Isha colleagues and fellow meditators, poet Arundhathi Subramaniam presents an evocative portrait of a contemporary mystic and guru—a man who seems to pack the intensity and adventure of several lifetimes into a single one.