Religious Books - Page 12

In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (Evolution and Cognition Series)

Scott Atran

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Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Thoughtful analysis of the origin of religious beliefs 4 out of 5 stars.
24 of 25 people found this review helpful.

There have been a slew of recent books by scientists on religion which fall basically into two camps. The first, exemplified by Sam Harris' "The End of Faith," are essentially attacks on the logical plausibility of the major religious belief systems. For those who have already realized that these sorts of beliefs are absurd, such works are entertaining but are a bit like preaching to the choir, if you'll excuse the metaphor. The second camp, exemplified by Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained," are attempts at explaining WHY people believe in such absurdities, from the perspectives of cognitive neuropsychology and anthropology. Atran's book is in the latter camp, and in fact overlaps to some extent with Boyer's book, published at about the same time, although each author has unique insights. I especially liked Atran's analysis of the origin of beliefs in the supernatural as stemming from a cognitive module predisposed to interpret environmental stimuli as coming from a potential predator, and I also found his analysis of "meme theory" to be enlightening (he strongly discounts it). Atran's book is the harder to read of the two and is largely missing the dry sense of humor in Boyer's book, which is why I docked it one star. I also disagree with the pessimism in Atran's last chapter about why religions are likely to endure indefinitely; I believe the secular trends present especially since Darwin must ultimately prevail. But his book is certainly a valuable contribution to the discussion of the origins of religious thought and behavior, which is of paramount importance in understanding today's world of religious fanaticism.

Editorial Review:

This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.

The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth

David Bentley Hart

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"The Beauty of the Infinite" is a splendid extended essay in "theological aesthetics." David Bentley Hart here meditates on the power of a Christian understanding of beauty and sublimity to rise above the violence — both philosophical and literal — characteristic of the postmodern world.

The book begins by tracing the shifting use and nature of metaphysics in the thought of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze, Nancy, Levinas, and others. Hart pays special attention to Nietzsche's famous narrative of the "will to power" — a narrative largely adopted by the world today — and he offers an engaging revision (though not rejection) of the genealogy of nihilism, thereby highlighting the significant "interruption" that Christian thought introduced into the history of metaphysics.

This discussion sets the stage for a retrieval of the classic Christian account of beauty and sublimity, and of the relation of both to the question of being. Written in the form of a "dogmatica minora," this main section of the book offers a pointed reading of the Christian story in four moments, or parts: Trinity, creation, salvation, and eschaton. Through a combination of narrative and argument throughout, Hart ends up demonstrating the power of Christian metaphysics not only to withstand the critiques of modern and postmodern thought but also to move well beyond them.

Strikingly original and deeply rewarding, "The Beauty of the Infinite" is both a constructively critical account of the history of metaphysics and a compelling contribution to it.

Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path : A Philosophy of Freedom (Classics in Anthroposophy)

Rudolf Steiner

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Of all of his works, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path is the one that Steiner himself believed would have the longest life and the greatest spiritual and cultural consequences. It was written as a phenomenological account of the "results of observing the human soul according to the methods of natural science.

This seminal work asserts that free spiritual activity - understood as the human ability to think and act independently of physical nature - is the suitable path for human beings today to gain true knowledge of themselves and of the universe. This is not merely a philosophical volume, but rather a warm, heart-oriented guide to the practice and experience of living thinking.

Readers will not find abstract philosophy here, but a step-by-step account of how a person may come to experience living, intuitive thinking - "the conscious experience of a purely spiritual content."

During the past hundred years since it was written, many have tried to discover this "new thinking" that could help us understand the various spiritual, ecological, social, political, and philosophical issues facing us. But only Rudolf Steiner laid out a path that leads from ordinary thinking to the level of pure spiritual activity - intuitive thinking - in which we become co-creators and co-redeemers of the world.

What We Can't Not Know: A Guide

J. Budziszewski

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Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

J. Budziszewski’s newest book is about the lost world of common truths—what we all really know about right and wrong.

We are passing through an eerie phase of history. The things that everyone really knows are treated as unheard of, and the principles of decency are attacked as indecent. Exposing the emptiness of contemporary moral fashions, Budziszewski explores the rules of human conduct that we can’t not know.

Budziszewski’s purpose is to "bolster the confidence of plain people in the rational foundations of their common moral sense." He shows that certain moral truths—"as real as arithmetic"—are part of the equipment of a rational mind. They are not only true for all, but at some level known to all. Yet, paradoxically, they are under attack. He explains why.

Addressing "the persuaded, the half-persuaded, and the wish-I-were-persuaded," Budziszewski shows the unanimity of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish traditions about these common truths. But what about the unpersuaded—those who deny the reality of the moral law, who are on the other side of the great dispute over the basic norms for human life? Civility, he insists, does not require that this unprecedented gulf be papered over. What’s needed are charity and clarity, which he provides in abundance.

"A few times in a generation, if we are fortunate, moral intelligence finds a voice as lucid, engaging, and relentless as that of J. Budziszewski," says Richard John Neuhaus, publisher of First Things.

Was Jesus God?

Richard Swinburne

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Was the author a theologian or philosopher? 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 29 people found this review helpful.

How should one approach this book? It is a book about religion but it was written by an author acclaimed to be a philosophical theologian. In this book Richard Swinburne ("RS") sets out, not to preach, but to prove, a Christian assertion, namely that Jesus is God (this assertion is part of the Trinitarian doctrine although Unitarian Christians will not agree to this assertion). That being the case, this book must be approached philosophically and rationally, that is, we need to cast faith and belief aside for they lay in the domain of the church, not in the house of philosophy.

The issue or question that RS sought to answer was: "Was Jesus God" (the use of the past tense is puzzling, but of no great importance for this review)? He realised that the question makes no sense unless "God" itself is proved. He has not done that in the book (nor in his other book, "Is there a God?" 1996 Oxford University Press). He merely made assumptions that "God" exists. From such a premise, the arguments would naturally become irrelevant, and the conclusion weak and fallible (since God was assummed and not proved, the issue whether Jesus was God lost all its significance). However, it is still useful to see some of the methods he employed in the author's argument (which was largely based on assumptions and reliance on second degree hearsay evidence). In the very first page he says that he refers to God as "he" even though "God is neither male nor female." How does he know that? Do all Christians agree with his statement? It is an example of the kind of unproven assertions that the author made throughout the book. He forgot that it was Jesus who taught us to pray "Our Father who art in Heaven" he didn't say "Our Mother" or "Our Parent". RS's reasoning shows up deep flaws in his thesis. He said (pg 6-7) that humans have bodies but God does not need a body. What does the author think resurrection mean then? If Jesus were to rise bodily from the grave, then we have a situation that part of the trinity is organic body, and part of it (God) not. If Jesus did not rise bodily, then his rise to heaven was not a resurrection. He just went the same way all good Christians are supposed to go after death - in spirit.

His claims about God giving us "free will" can be challenged. There is insufficient space in this review for a full counter-argument so I shall merely pose a couple of questions that intelligent and rational minds can work out for themselves. First, why give us free will in this short human life to choose God and heaven, and then, when in heaven, deprive us of our identity and free will to choose the things we have liked all our lives - our food, our music, our spouses - everything. They will all be taken away and we will be made to no longer like them. Where's our choice then? Secondly, it seems that God himself does not have free will because if he had, then he cannot be all good since (being all powerful)he can choose to create the best possible world, that is, one without evil. A God who is all good would not have created evil of any kind, whether evil is defined as a murderous intent, or a tsunami, or an earthquake, or even cancer cells. I would not do so if I had the power; would you?

RS relied on the declarations in the Nicene Creed, but that was a compromise arrived at by the bishops in a tumultuous period in Christian history. It sought to have unity and consistency, but it was not fully successful because to this day, there are many Christians who either reject it or have very different interpretations of it from that of others. RS wrote about the "atonement" and the support he gathered came mainly from Paul, who never met Jesus, knew nothing about the crucifixion and resurrection. Paul's letters and his own evidence came largely from the stories of others. It is hearsay upon hearsay; such evidence would be rejected as unreliable for proving any fact, let alone an important assertion of fact that Jesus is God. Even Paul's own conversion was a dubious event. He could well have been blinded by heatstroke and, having recovered, believed he was chosen by God - but that is another story.

RS then discussed the resurrection, and here the philosopher in him regressed into the theologian. He accepted the accounts in the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John as true. In so doing, he ignored biblical scholarship that points out all the fallibilities and inconsistencies in these gospels. Even the lay reader can, if he were patient, compare the birth, death, and resurrection accounts in these gospels, and discover the inconsistencies and contradictions in them. Unless the contradictions are cleared, how can they be relied upon as a basis to answer the question posed? RS asserted that any religious revelation required "an interpreting body" which he said was "the church". At this point, only one question needs to be asked - which church? The fallibility of the Nicene Creed was exposed by RS's statement that the "Nicene Creed claims that God has provided `one holy catholic and Apostolic Church.'" He used the weak word "claims" but within a paragraph, he moved to a strong and clear acceptance of that "claim"; in other words, he accepted as true that there is one holy catholic and Apostolic Church. Not only is that statement untrue within Christendom, but the God that the Christians share with the Jews and the Muslims (Jehovah) have given them disparate church/temple/mosque with contradictory interpretations. To the Jews and the Muslims, Jesus was clearly not God. RS saw the problems of the divided church and attempted to make some excuses for it, but he did not reconcile the division with the Jews and the Muslims. How does one talk about proof and truth unless the Jewish and Muslim positions are proven untrue. It is one thing to believe them untrue because one believes his Christian faith to be true, but it is utterly different when one seeks to prove one's version true in a book like this.

These are the closing remarks of the author:

"I conclude that the fact that the later Church taught the other items of the Nicene Creed in no way detracts from the very probable truth of the central claim of the Nicene Creed (made, as I have claimed, very probable on other grounds) that Jesus was God (that is, a divine person). From that it follows, since no divine person can cease to be divine, that Jesus is God."

If this book was meant to be a critical and rational book, it must be read critically and rationally, and any judgment that the reader passes must be a judgment so arrived. Otherwise, we need not bother, and just go to church (any one) and listen to the pastor or priest instead.

Editorial Review:

Writing clearly and powerfully, Swinburne argues that it is probable that the main Christian doctrines about the nature of God and his actions in the world are true. In virtue of his omnipotence and perfect goodness, the author shows, God must be a Trinity, live a human life in order to share our suffering, and found a church which would enable him to tell all humans about this. It is also quite probable that he would provide his human life as atonement for our wrongdoing, teach us how we should live, and tell us his plans for our future after death. Among founders of religions, Jesus uniquely satisfies the requirement of living the sort of human life which God would need to have lived. But to give us adequate reason to believe that Jesus was God, God would need to put his "signature" on the life of Jesus by an act which he alone could do--raise him from the dead. And there is adequate historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.

The Critique of Judgment (Great Books in Philosophy)

Immanuel Kant

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Considered by Kant to be the culmination of his critical philosophy, "The Critique of Judgement" was the last work in the trilogy begun with "The Critique of Pure Reason" and continued with "The Critique of Practical Reason". In this work, Kant seeks to establish the a priori principles underlying the faculty of judgement, just as he did in his previous analyses of pure and practical reason. The first part deals with the subject of our aesthetic sensibility; we respond to certain natural phenomena as beautiful, says Kant, when we recognise in nature a harmonious order that satisfies the mind's own need for order. The second half of the critique concentrates on the apparent teleology in nature's design of organisms, i.e., organisms display a complex inter-working of parts, which are subordinated as means to serve the purpose of the whole.All of this suggests, concludes Kant, that our minds are inclined to attribute a final purpose to nature's design and to life as a whole. This natural tendency to see purpose in nature is the main principle underlying all of our judgements. Although, this might imply a super-sensible Designer behind nature and a theistic interpretation of the world, in the final analysis Kant maintains an agnostic stance. Ever the objective philosopher he insists that though we are predisposed to read design and purpose into nature, we cannot therefore prove a supernatural dimension or the existence of God. Such considerations are beyond reason and are solely the province of faith.

Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist

Dan Barker

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Total reviews: 225 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Interesting thoughts. 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I think that this book is really a nice read. It has some very good arguments in it. Mr. Barker is a very rational person and he seems to have honestly explored the truth without too much bias. I don't particularly care for reading, but after reading this book I am going to read some other books that Dan has sited. This book wants you dive deeper into the topics it presents.

Thank you, Dan 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I want to publicly thank Dan Barker. I met Dan in his teens. I remember riding in the back of a station wagon with him through Mexico while we both did evangelistic work. Dan always amazed me. The breadth of his learning and thinking was quite humbling to one who only had an IQ of 140. Dan also had a tremendously funny, but quiet sense of humor, such as making funny about the parts of a tree ("I bet that guy was a real sap").

After Dan had changed his faith from the G-d of the Bible to the god of self, I would chat with him on the phone about his new belief system. As usual, Dan would be way ahead of me in the debate atmosphere. While I was still on point one, he had zoomed ahead to point twenty and I never could think as nimbly as he could, and as a result I never gave a very good response to Dan's genius. Later, I would kick myself for not making such-and-such a response to his line of reasoning.

Dan in more recent years has also strengthened my own Biblical faith. Dan's arguments against certain alleged contradictions in the Biblical record caused me to investigate his claims. I found most of them wanting.

But Dan didn't err based on his previous theological and Biblical training at Azusa University, but on his reliance on the historical teachings of the church. A deeper look by Dan would have found that the Christian prejudices against a Jewish world view of Scripture had led him down the primrose path of repeating the same errors of anti-Semitism that the church has been promulgating for two millenia.

As a result of confronting many of the arguments that Dan presents in his book, I was able to look closer at my own understanding of the teachings of Holy Writ, and I found that as I uncovered the correct answers to Dan's "proofs," that my faith was growing in a way that led me to the Jewish Messianic movement where the Messiah and the Bible are viewed through different lenses. I learned that Dan's "proofs" were no proofs at all, since he was just fighting the old shiboleths of the church rather than the truth when interpreting a Jewish Book with Jewish reasoning.

I would challenge Dan and his disciples to reexamine his arguments from the point of view of the very authors of the Scriptures, both the Tenach (Old Testament) and the Brit Chadashah (New Testament), most of whom were Jewish. They might find that 2 + 2 still equals 4, and that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Messiah after all.

Editorial Review:

Autobiographical story of journeying from fundamentalist/evangelical minister to atheist. Includes criticism of religion, fallacies and harm of Christianity, and invocation of freethought, reason and humanism.

Life Is Real Only Then, When I Am (All and Everything Series, 3)

G. I. Gurdjieff

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Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Good G, Worse Presentation 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

First part of this book is okay - reveals the mystical part of G. Rest is difficult to follow, probably because of the rigid translation. If someone who is familiar with G attempts to translate this book again, that will be a great service to humanity.
I could tastefully swallow G through "Views form the Real World" and "In Search of the Miraculius" than any of his books although "Belzebe" and "Meeting with.." are lot better than this "I am..".
G has a great influence in moulding my spiritual journey and I hate to see a book that's so badly translated and presented.

Editorial Review:

Begun in 1934, this final volume of Gurdjieff's trilogy, All and Everything, is a primary source for Gurdjieff's ideas, methods, and biography. Gurdjieff offers guidance to his "community of seekers, " through a selection of talks given in 1930, autobiographical material crucial to understanding his ideas, and the incomplete essay "The Outer and Inner World of Man." Available for the first time in paperback, this is the ultimate piece of Gurdjieff's work that his numerous followers have been waiting for.

Education and the Significance of Life

Krishnamurti

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

One of the best books on Krishnamurti's "teachings" 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I've read over 25 Krishamurti books, including all the "big ones" like Freedom from the Known, The First and Last Freedom, Total Freedom, Awakening of Intelligence, Flight of the Eagle, Krishmaurti's Notebook, etc., many of which I've read more than once. I've given all of them away to share K's message but kept four of them which I keep as references for focused daily reflection/meditation (as opposed to the meditation of all waking life). The four I've kept are Freedom from the Known, On God, On Right Livelihood, and Education and the Significance of Life (the last one of great relevance to me since I'm an educator). And so now I always recommend (and often give) the first three books on that list I just mentioned to anyone who wants to learn more about K's "teachings." "Freedom from the Known" is the single best, most concise and thorough summary of all K's teachings. "On God" should greatly help anyone who is searching for ultimate reality, Truth, God, Enlightenment, Nirvana, The Meaning of Life, or whatever one wants to call it. No summary will do it justice; you must read it for yourself. "On Right Livelihood" addresses the issue of our daily living, in work, leisure, and even to some degree home life and family relationship, becuase, as K emphasizes, they all should be an integrated whole, not fragmented parts of our lives. "Education and the Significance of Life" is also or relevance to anyone who has children or who teaches; it will transform the way you view childrearing and education. I would say that those four books would be all a person would need to transform one's life; to have a radical revolution in living.

Editorial Review:

The teacher probes the Western problems of conformity and loss of personal values while offering a fresh approach to self-understanding and the meaning of personal freedom and mature love.

The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature

Pierre Hadot

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Editorial Review:

Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago the Greek thinker Heraclitus supposedly uttered the cryptic words "Phusis kruptesthai philei." How the aphorism, usually translated as "Nature loves to hide," has haunted Western culture ever since is the subject of this engaging study by Pierre Hadot. Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both the ancients and later thinkers such as Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, Hadot traces successive interpretations of Heraclitus' words. Over time, Hadot finds, "Nature loves to hide" has meant that all that lives tends to die; that Nature wraps herself in myths; and (for Heidegger) that Being unveils as it veils itself. Meanwhile the pronouncement has been used to explain everything from the opacity of the natural world to our modern angst.

From these kaleidoscopic exegeses and usages emerge two contradictory approaches to nature: the Promethean, or experimental-questing, approach, which embraces technology as a means of tearing the veil from Nature and revealing her secrets; and the Orphic, or contemplative-poetic, approach, according to which such a denuding of Nature is a grave trespass. In place of these two attitudes Hadot proposes one suggested by the Romantic vision of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schelling, who saw in the veiled Isis an allegorical expression of the sublime. "Nature is art and art is nature," Hadot writes, inviting us to embrace Isis and all she represents: art makes us intensely aware of how completely we ourselves are not merely surrounded by nature but also part of nature.

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