The False Dialectic Between Christians and Atheists
The False Dialectic Between Christians and Atheists

Author: Tom Donovan

Publisher: Algora Publishing

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1628942126

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Could it be that atheism and belief in God are both forms of avoidance behavior? It's easier to focus on belief than it is to take up a new practice of living. Perhaps both are ideological distractions that mystify the nature of reality and what knowledge is. What if we admit that we are neither believers nor atheists: Does that mean we're nothing?Philosophy aims to help us understand the world without appealing to something beyond. It's considered to be rooted in the search for eternal truths, and when the truth is unclear, philosophy is expected to embrace modesty and have a willingness to say I don't know. Rejecting the false dialectic of God/atheism will help us recognize that the world is our construction and our responsibility so long as we are here.Drawing on Georg Luk�cs and Max Horkheimer, the author argues that belief in God and atheism are both ideological distractions. They are both forms of immaturity that can only be transcended through action. The real good news is that we can do away with belief in the supernatural, but it will take more than non-belief; it will take philosophical action.He takes us on a journey through our philosophical practices to purge ourselves of mystified notions. The journey is long, but at least the path is strewn with the charm of Socrates, Descartes, Marx, and Sartre.In short, Prof. Donovan says, Nothing exists but this world, our world... Nothing is beyond God and atheism. Why not become nothing? Make yourself and those who matter proud.

The Most Reluctant Convert
The Most Reluctant Convert

Author: David C. Downing

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-05-07

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1666718939

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In his teens, a young man wrote, “I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them.” After serving in the trenches of WW1, the same young man said, “I never sank so low as to pray.” To a religious friend, he wrote impatiently, “You can’t start with God. I don’t accept God!” This young man was C. S. Lewis, the “foul-mouthed atheist” who would become one of the most eloquent Christian writers of the twentieth century. David C. Downing offers a unique look at Lewis’s personal journey to faith and the profound influence it had on his life as a writer and eventual follower of Christ. This is the first book to focus on the period from Lewis’s childhood to his early thirties, a tumultuous journey of spiritual and intellectual exploration. It was not despite this journey but precisely because of it that Lewis understood the search for life’s meaning so well.

Freud for Thought
Freud for Thought

Author: Tom Donovan

Publisher: Algora Publishing

Published: 2023-10-01

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1628945206

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Prof. Tom Donovan suggests reading Freud today for inspiration in shaping one's outlook and taking control of one's life. We all have to confront the human condition and we face a constant challenge to steer a satisfying course around, over and through the distractions that tempt us to accept the easy gratifications and let the real treasures dribble away. Can one live a philosophical life in a world that has killed God and given the reins of society to what Nietzsche called “the last men”? Many of us are unsatisfied with the alternatives offered up today from various ideologies, as well as the obscene nature of today’s consumer capitalism, and the incoherent and distracting roaring of identity politics. But are there viable choices in the search for meaning, happiness, and value? There are major threads throughout our philosophical tradition for understanding the human condition and coming to terms with both our individual and collective lives. This book suggests that we return to our Western philosophical tradition: The Ancients, the Frankfurt School, and the existentialist penseurs. Tom Donovan places Freud within this tradition and utilizes Civilization and its Discontents as a catalyst to offer theoretical tools and concrete practices on how to forge ourselves into excellent humans. Happiness requires the evolution of a self. A coherent interpretive and hermeneutic approach understands that identities are situational. We should be wary of essentializing them. This book argues that there is a philosophical way of living and that this path emphasizes the pursuit of excellence and the courage to mediate our instincts through deep reflection, conversation, and noble practices. Rather than searching for some child within, what if we try to forge mature and deep ways of being and acting? La vie philosophique is the true path towards happiness and capturing human meaning and noble values. This book is for readers interested in forging a meaningful life, and for those of us who are not interested in dogmatic religions, vulgar consumerism, and overbearing social identities.

Atheist Delusions
Atheist Delusions

Author: David Bentley Hart

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2009-04-21

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0300155646

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Religious scholar Hart argues that contemporary antireligious polemics are based not only upon conceptual confusions but upon facile simplifications of history and provides a powerful antidote to the New Atheists' misrepresentations of the Christian past.

How To Read Kierkegaard
How To Read Kierkegaard

Author: John D. Caputo

Publisher: Granta Books

Published: 2014-04-03

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 1783780649

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Soren Kierkegaard is one of the prophets of the contemporary age, a man whose acute observations on life in nineteenth-century Copenhagen might have been written yesterday, whose work anticipated fundamental developments in psychoanalysis, philosophy, theology and the critique of mass culture by over a century. John Caputo offers a compelling account of Kierkegaard as a thinker of particular relevance in our postmodern times, who set off a revolution that numbers Martin Heidegger and Karl Barth among its heirs. His conceptions of truth as a self-transforming 'deed' and his haunting account of the 'single individual' seemed to have been written with us especially in mind. Extracts include Kierkegaard's classic reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac, the jolting theory that truth is subjectivity and his ground-breaking analysis of the concept of anxiety.

The Christians as the Romans Saw Them
The Christians as the Romans Saw Them

Author: Robert Louis Wilken

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780300098396

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans.

Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes
Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes

Author: Derrick Peterson

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-02-17

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 1532653336

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

We are all haunted by histories. They shape our presuppositions and ballast our judgments. In terms of science and religion this means most of us walk about haunted by rumors of a long war. However, there is no such thing as the “history of the conflict of science and Christianity,” and this is a book about it. In the last half of the twentieth century a sea change in the history of science and religion occurred, revealing not only that the perception of protracted warfare between religion and science was a curious set of mythologies that had been combined together into a sort of supermyth in need of debunking. It was also seen that this collective mythology arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by historians involved in many sides of the debates over Darwin’s discoveries, and from there latched onto the public imagination at large. Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes takes the reader on a journey showing how these myths were constructed, collected together, and eventually debunked. Join us for a story of flat earths and fake footnotes, to uncover the strange tale of how the conflict of science and Christianity was written into history.

Atheism
Atheism

Author: George H. Smith

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2010-11-02

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1615929959

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Does a god exist? This question has undoubtedly been asked, in one form or another, since man has had the ability to communicate. . . Thousands of volumes have been written on the subject of a god, and the vast majority have answered the questions with a resounding 'Yes!' " "You are about to read a minority viewpoint." With this intriguing introduction, George H. Smith sets out to demolish what he considers the most widespread and destructive of all the myths devised by man - the concept of a supreme being. With painstaking scholarship and rigorous arguments, Mr. Smith examines, dissects, and refutes the myriad "proofs" offered by theists - the defenses of sophisticated, professional theologians, as well as the average religious layman. He explores the historical and psychological havoc wrought by religion in general - and concludes that religious belief cannot have any place in the life of modern, rational man. "It is not my purpose to convert people to atheism . . . (but to) demonstrate that the belief in God is irrational to the point of absurdity. If a person wishes to continue believing in a god, that is his prerogative, but he can no longer excuse his belief in the name of reason and moral necessity."

The Irrational Atheist
The Irrational Atheist

Author: Vox Day

Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

Published: 2008-02-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1935251341

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

On one side of the argument is a collection of godless academics with doctorates from the finest universities in England, France, and the United States. On the other is Irrational Atheist author Vox Day, armed with nothing more than historical and statistical facts. Presenting a compelling argument (but not for the side one might expect), Day strips away the pseudo-scientific pretentions of New Atheism with his intelligent application of logic, history, military science, political economy, and well-documented research. The arguments of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michel Onfray are all methodically exposed and discredited as Day provides extensive evidence proving, among other things, that: More than 93 percent of all the wars in human history had no relation to religion The Spanish Inquisition had no jurisdiction over professing Jews, Muslims, or atheists, and executed fewer people on an annual basis than the state of Texas Atheists are 3.84 times more likely to be imprisoned than Christians "Red" state crime is primarily in "blue" counties Sexually abused girls are 55 times more likely to commit suicide than girls raised Catholic In the twentieth century, atheistic regimes killed three times more people in peacetime than those killed in all the wars and individual crimes combined. The Irrational Atheist provides the rational thinker with empirical proof that atheism's claims against religion are unfounded in logic, fact, and science.