In Gods We Trust

In Gods We Trust PDF

Author: Scott Atran

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-12-09

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 019988434X

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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.

In God We Trust

In God We Trust PDF

Author: Jean Shepherd

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2010-10-27

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 030776866X

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A collection of humorous and nostalgic Americana stories—the beloved, bestselling classics that inspired the movie A Christmas Story Before Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean Shepherd: a master monologist and writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant—and utterly hilarious—works of comic art. In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations. In God We Trust, Shepherd's wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown, disproves the adage “You can never go back.” Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the World's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth. A comic genius who bridged the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri.

In Gods We Trust

In Gods We Trust PDF

Author: Scott Atran

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-12-09

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 0195178033

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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 in the human condition.

In God We Trust

In God We Trust PDF

Author: B. B. Hicks

Publisher: WestBow Press

Published: 2019-03-29

Total Pages: 60

ISBN-13: 1973656841

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Today we are facing insurmountable problems because we have taken God out of our homes, schools, churches—and now our nation. Have we taken God out of our lives? Have we become too busy for God? Are we so preoccupied with the cares of this world or the things of this world that we don’t take time or make time for our God? In God We Trust is based on the fact that America started as a nation trusting God, and author B. B. Hicks goes on to look at where we are today as a nation, as a church, and as people of God. In God We Trust teaches us about how to get to know God, trust God, and turn back to God. And most importantly, it will help us learn how to stay connected to God. In God We Trust is a clarion call to the nation, as well as to the church, to turn back to God. We, as people of God, need to put first things first—and God should be first in our lives. We should perform a self-assessment to determine what are our priorities and what is first on our agenda. The Bible tells us that God is a jealous God, and he wants to be first in all things (Exodus 20:4–5). Through Jesus Christ, we can learn to put God first.

Why We Believe in God(s)

Why We Believe in God(s) PDF

Author: J. Anderson Thomson

Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 89

ISBN-13: 0984493239

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In this groundbreaking volume, J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., MD, with Clare Aukofer, offers a succinct yet comprehensive study of how and why the human mind generates religious belief. Dr. Thomson, a highly respected practicing psychiatrist with credentials in forensic psychiatry and evolutionary psychology, methodically investigates the components and causes of religious belief in the same way any scientist would investigate the movement of astronomical bodies or the evolution of life over time—that is, as a purely natural phenomenon. Providing compelling evidence from psychology, the cognitive neurosciences, and related fields, he, with Ms. Aukofer, presents an easily accessible and exceptionally convincing case that god(s) were created by man—not vice versa. With this slim volume, Dr. Thomson establishes himself as a must-read thinker and leading voice on the primacy of reason and science over superstition and religion.

In Gods We Trust

In Gods We Trust PDF

Author: Thomas Robbins

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13: 1351513060

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Much has changed since publication of the first edition of this established text in the sociology of religion. Revised and expanded, this edition emphasizes new patterns of religious change and conflict emerging in the United States in the latter part of the twentieth century. Leading scholars describe and analyze developments in five main areas: The fundamentalist and evangelical revival; challenge and renewal in mainline churches; spiritual innovation and the so-called New Age; women's movements and issues and their impact; and politics and civil religion. Chapters include an examination of religious movements' responses to AIDS; Christian schools; quasi-religions; healing rites and goddess worship; recruitment of women to charismatic and Hassidic groups,; televangelists and the Christian Right; racist rural populism; contemporary Mormonism and its growth; cults and brainwashing; Jonestown; dissidence in the Catholic church; and trance-channeling, among other topics. A new introductory chapter by the editors establishes an integrating framework in terms of three themes: increasing conflict and controversy associated with American religion; increasing focus on various forms of power in American religion; and challenges to models of secularization and modernization inherent in religious revival, innovation, and politicization. A concluding chapter by the editors looks at new trends and assesses their possible impact in coming years. Like its predecessor, this outstanding collection is a significant contribution to the literature as well as a valuable resource for the classroom.

Big Gods

Big Gods PDF

Author: Ara Norenzayan

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0691169748

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Examines how the belief in gods has lead to cooperation and sometimes conflict between groups. The author also looks at how some cooperative societies have developed without belief in gods.

In God We Trust

In God We Trust PDF

Author: Michael Shea

Publisher: Michael Shea

Published: 2012-05-11

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0985128704

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This book is a unique look into God's hand in American history, viewed through the life of George Washington. The book reflects the providential view that Washington and other Founding Fathers had of the God of history (God of Abraham). The book attempts to document God's hand in Washington's life and the Revolutionary War using Washington's own words and detailing the numerous micarcles that led to the country's eventual independence and subsequent constitution. The book also explores the country's reason for existence, God's purpose in the founding of the United States, and what it portends for our future survival as a nation.

Lies We Believe About God

Lies We Believe About God PDF

Author: Wm. Paul Young

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-03-07

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1501101412

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From the author of the bestselling novel The Shack and the New York Times bestsellers Cross Roads and Eve comes a compelling, conversational exploration of twenty-eight assumptions about God—assumptions that just might be keeping us from experiencing His unconditional, all-encompassing love. In his wildly popular novels, Wm. Paul Young portrayed the Triune God in ways that challenged our thinking—sometimes upending long-held beliefs, but always centered in the eternal, all-encompassing nature of God’s love. Now, in Wm. Paul Young’s first nonfiction book, he invites us to revisit our assumptions about God—this time using the Bible, theological discussion, and personal anecdotes. Paul encourages us to think through beliefs we’ve presumed to be true and consider whether some might actually be false. Expounding on the compassion fans felt from the “Papa” portrayed in The Shack—now a major film starring Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer—Paul encourages you to think anew about important issues including sin, religion, hell, politics, identity, creation, human rights, and helping us discover God’s deep and abiding love.

Supernatural Agents

Supernatural Agents PDF

Author: Iikka Pyysiainen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-04-27

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0199745722

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The cognitive science of religion is a rapidly growing field whose practitioners apply insights from advances in cognitive science in order to provide a better understanding of religious impulses, beliefs, and behaviors. In this book Ilkka Pyysi?inen shows how this methodology can profitably be used in the comparative study of beliefs about superhuman agents. He begins by developing a theoretical outline of the basic, modular architecture of the human mind and especially the human capacity to understand agency. He then goes on to discuss examples of supernatural agency in detail, arguing that the human ability to attribute beliefs and desires to others forms the basis of conceptions of supernatural agents and of such social cognition in which supernatural agents are postulated as interested parties in social life. Beliefs about supernatural agency are natural, says Pyysi?inen, in the sense that such concepts are used in an intuitive and automatic fashion. Two dots and a straight line below them automatically trigger the idea of a face, for example. Given that the mind consists of a host of such modular mechanisms, certain kinds of beliefs will always have a selective advantage over others. Abstract theological concepts are usually elaborate versions of such simpler and more contagious folk conceptions. Pyysi?inen uses ethnographical and survey materials as well as doctrinal treatises to show that there are certain recurrent patterns in beliefs about supernatural agents both at the level of folk-religion and of formal theology.