The Embattled Gods
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| Author | : Meghan O'Gieblyn |
| Publisher | : Anchor |
| Total Pages | : 305 |
| Release | : 2022-07-12 |
| Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
| ISBN | : 0525562710 |
A strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future." —Phillip Lopate “[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.
| Author | : Meghan O'Gieblyn |
| Publisher | : Anchor |
| Total Pages | : 242 |
| Release | : 2018-10-09 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 0385543840 |
Winner of The Believer Book Award for Nonfiction "Meghan O'Gieblyn's deep and searching essays are written with a precise sort of skepticism and a slight ache in the heart. A first-rate and riveting collection." --Lorrie Moore A fresh, acute, and even profound collection that centers around two core (and related) issues of American identity: faith, in general and the specific forms Christianity takes in particular; and the challenges of living in the Midwest when culture is felt to be elsewhere. What does it mean to be a believing Christian and a Midwesterner in an increasingly secular America where the cultural capital is retreating to both coasts? The critic and essayist Meghan O'Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka "Flyover Country." She writes of her "existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still," and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the fifteen superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection. The subjects of these essays range from the rebranding (as it were) of Hell in contemporary Christian culture ("Hell"), a theme park devoted to the concept of intelligent design ("Species of Origin"), the paradoxes of Christian Rock ("Sniffing Glue"), Henry Ford's reconstructed pioneer town of Greenfield Village and its mixed messages ("Midwest World"), and the strange convergences of Christian eschatology and the digital so-called Singularity ("Ghosts in the Cloud"). Meghan O'Gieblyn stands in relation to her native Midwest as Joan Didion stands in relation to California - which is to say a whole-hearted lover, albeit one riven with ambivalence at the same time.
| Author | : Emily Katz Anhalt |
| Publisher | : Stanford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 369 |
| Release | : 2021-09-14 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 1503629406 |
An incisive exploration of the way Greek myths empower us to defeat tyranny. As tyrannical passions increasingly plague twenty-first-century politics, tales told in ancient Greek epics and tragedies provide a vital antidote. Democracy as a concept did not exist until the Greeks coined the term and tried the experiment, but the idea can be traced to stories that the ancient Greeks told and retold. From the eighth through the fifth centuries BCE, Homeric epics and Athenian tragedies exposed the tyrannical potential of individuals and groups large and small. These stories identified abuses of power as self-defeating. They initiated and fostered a movement away from despotism and toward broader forms of political participation. Following her highly praised book Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths, the classicist Emily Katz Anhalt retells tales from key ancient Greek texts and proceeds to interpret the important message they hold for us today. As she reveals, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus's Oresteia, and Sophocles's Antigone encourage us—as they encouraged the ancient Greeks—to take responsibility for our own choices and their consequences. These stories emphasize the responsibilities that come with power (any power, whether derived from birth, wealth, personal talents, or numerical advantage), reminding us that the powerful and the powerless alike have obligations to each other. They assist us in restraining destructive passions and balancing tribal allegiances with civic responsibilities. They empower us to resist the tyrannical impulses not only of others but also in ourselves. In an era of political polarization, Embattled demonstrates that if we seek to eradicate tyranny in all its toxic forms, ancient Greek epics and tragedies can point the way.
| Author | : Christian Smith |
| Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
| Total Pages | : 325 |
| Release | : 2014-12-10 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 022622922X |
“An excellent study of evangelicalism” from the award-winning sociologist and author of Souls in Transition and Soul Searching (Library Journal). Evangelicalism is one of the strongest religious traditions in America today; twenty million Americans identify themselves with the evangelical movement. Given the modern pluralistic world we live in, why is evangelicalism so popular? Based on a national telephone survey and more than three hundred personal interviews with evangelicals and other churchgoing Protestants, this study provides a detailed analysis of the commitments, beliefs, concerns, and practices of this thriving group. Examining how evangelicals interact with and attempt to influence secular society, this book argues that traditional, orthodox evangelicalism endures not despite, but precisely because of, the challenges and structures of our modern pluralistic environment. This work also looks beyond evangelicalism to explore more broadly the problems of traditional religious belief and practice in the modern world. With its impressive empirical evidence, innovative theory, and substantive conclusions, American Evangelicalism will provoke lively debate over the state of religious practice in contemporary America. “Based on a three-year study of American evangelicals, Smith takes the pulse of contemporary evangelicalism and offers substantial evidence of a strong heartbeat . . . Evangelicalism is thriving, says Smith, not by being countercultural or by retreating into isolation but by engaging culture at the same time that it constructs, maintains and markets its subcultural identity. Although Smith depends heavily on sociological theory, he makes his case in an accessible and persuasive style that will appeal to a broad audience.” —Publishers Weekly
| Author | : John Bonner |
| Publisher | : Weiser Books |
| Total Pages | : 228 |
| Release | : 2002-03-15 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 9781578632114 |
While it began as a mystical interpretation of Jewish scriptural texts, today Qabalah is much more. As John Bonner writes in his introduction, "Qabalah is a metaphysical philosophy, or rather a theosophy, that sets out to answer a series of vital questions regarding the nature of God, His creation, and the place of man in His divine plan." It is a living, growing system of personal development. In addition, much of contemporary Western magick is founded on the work of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which based its ritual and teachings firmly in Qabalah. This scholarly introduction explores the mysteries of Qabalah through the symbolism of the Tree of Life and its four distinct elements: the three Pillars of Manifestation, the ten Holy Sephiroth, the Paths that run to and from the Sephiroth, and the Veils. For each Sephirah, Bonner provides detailed information on magical, astrological, and tarot correspondences - as well as how different religious traditions relate to the concepts contained in each.
| Author | : Colin D. Standish |
| Publisher | : Hartland Publications |
| Total Pages | : 148 |
| Release | : 1995 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 9780923309299 |
"The Seventh-day Adventist church faces a crisis. Confusion and division are rampant. Assurance of truth has surrendered to uncertainty. Surety of faith has given way to an enfeebling pluralism. Distinctiveness has been overcome by ecumenism. The sense of urgency has been replaced by carnal security. The spiritual church has become a social club. Unwavering loyalty is now branded as bigotry. Faithfulness to christ is judged to be legalism. The defenders of truth are spurned as schismatics. The state of the church has led untold thousands to reevaluate their relationship to the seventh-day Adventist church. Many have lost all hope that the church would ever suceed in bringing God's truth to every inhabitant of the world - something which must occur if God's people will ever enter the kingdom of heaven. This has instigated the greatest separtationist movement ever known in our ranks. Embattled Church addresses this issue of separation. Has God written "Ichabod" across the portals of the seventh-day Adventist church? Must we look for another? The word of inspiration answers these questions unequivocally." -- Back cover.
| Author | : Johan Christiaan Beker |
| Publisher | : Fortress Press |
| Total Pages | : 174 |
| Release | : 1990 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 9781451410006 |
The special character of Paul's interpretation is marked by his ability to embody in his thought and praxis the movement of the incarnation, that is, the condescension of God into the depth of the human condition, so that the eternal Word of the gospel is able to become ever anew a word on target for the people to whom the gospel is addressed.
| Author | : |
| Publisher | : Lulu.com |
| Total Pages | : 262 |
| Release | : 2008-10 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0615258808 |
An outstanding survey of the greatest goddesses of ancient Egyptian history, this book is a definitive guide for intrepid wanderers of all backgrounds. Impeccably researched and lavishly illustrated. First-time explorers and hard-core Egyptophiles alike will find this guide to be an endlessly fascinating delight!
| Author | : Karen Armstrong |
| Publisher | : HarperCollins UK |
| Total Pages | : 460 |
| Release | : 2001 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 0006383483 |
One of the most potent forces bedevilling the modern world is religious fundamentalism. Armstrong explains how and why fundamentalists' understanding of religion and society differs so starkly from that of their contemporaries.
| Author | : David Quammen |
| Publisher | : W. W. Norton & Company |
| Total Pages | : 532 |
| Release | : 2004-09-17 |
| Genre | : Nature |
| ISBN | : 039307630X |
"Rich detail and vivid anecdotes of adventure....A treasure trove of exotic fact and hard thinking." —New York Times Book Review For millennia, lions, tigers, and their man-eating kin have kept our dark, scary forests dark and scary, and their predatory majesty has been the stuff of folklore. But by the year 2150 big predators may only exist on the other side of glass barriers and chain-link fences. Their gradual disappearance is changing the very nature of our existence. We no longer occupy an intermediate position on the food chain; instead we survey it invulnerably from above—so far above that we are in danger of forgetting that we even belong to an ecosystem. Casting his expert eye over the rapidly diminishing areas of wilderness where predators still reign, the award-winning author of The Song of the Dodo and The Tangled Tree examines the fate of lions in India's Gir forest, of saltwater crocodiles in northern Australia, of brown bears in the mountains of Romania, and of Siberian tigers in the Russian Far East. In the poignant and troublesome ferocity of these embattled creatures, we recognize something primeval deep within us, something in danger of vanishing forever.
