The Attraction of Religion
The Attraction of Religion

Author: D. Jason Slone

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-02-26

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1472531728

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Religion is an evolutionary puzzle. It involves beliefs in counterfactual worlds and engagement in costly rituals. Yet religion is widespread across all human cultures and eras. This begs the question, why are so many people attracted to religion? In The Attraction of Religion, essays by leading scholars in evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and religious studies demonstrate how religion may be related to evolutionary adaptations because religious commitments involve fitness-enhancing behaviours that promote reproduction, kinship, and social solidarity. Could it be that religion is wide-spread, at least in the modern world, because it helps to facilitate cooperative breeding? International contributors explore the philosophical and theoretical arguments for and against the use of costly signalling, sexual selection, and related theories to explain religion, and empirical findings that support or disconfirm such claims. The first book-length treatment that focuses specifically on costly signalling, sexual selection, and related evolutionary theories to explain religion, The Attraction of Religion will be an important contribution to the field and will be of interest to researchers in the fields of evolutionary psychology, religion and science, the psychology of religion, and anthropology of religion.

Using the Psychology of Attraction in Christian Outreach
Using the Psychology of Attraction in Christian Outreach

Author: Wendy L. Patrick

Publisher: American University Studies

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781433122149

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Drawing on her experience as a sex crimes prosecutor and a review of relevant research, this book exposes five powerful social and psychological techniques used successfully within both the dark side by criminals and on the positive side of interpersonal influence by those with selfless motives seeking to benefit others that capitalize on the power of attraction.

Attraction and Danger of Alien Religion
Attraction and Danger of Alien Religion

Author: Karl-Gustav Sandelin

Publisher: Mohr Siebeck

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9783161517426

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Early Judaism and early Christianity emerged during the Hellenistic and early Roman imperial era. They were, naturally, confronted with the Hellenistic and the Roman religion. The question therefore arose as to whether Jews or Christians were free to participate in religious activities alien to the religious heritage of their own. In his articles, Karl-Gustav Sandelin presents documentary material showing that this problem was a burning issue within Judaism from the beginning of the Hellenistic period until the end of the first century C.E. Several Jewish individuals converted to the Hellenistic or the Roman religion. Such behavior was also discussed and generally condemned, for example by the Books of Maccabees and authors such as Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus. A similar problem is to be found in the New Testament, notably in the letters of Paul, especially in the first letter to the Corinthians and in the Revelation of John.

Roadside Religion
Roadside Religion

Author: Timothy Beal

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2006-05-01

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780807010631

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the summer of 2002, Timothy K. Beal loaded his family into a twenty-nine-foot-long motor home and hit the rural highways of America in search of roadside religious attractions-sites like the World's Largest Ten Commandments and Precious Moments Chapel. Roadside Religion tells of his attempts to understand the meaning of these places as expressions of religious imagination and experience, and to encounter faith in all its awesome absurdity.

Same-Sex Attraction and the Church
Same-Sex Attraction and the Church

Author: Ed Shaw

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2015-11-09

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0830899790

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When Christians have same-sex attraction, how should the church respond? Pastor Ed Shaw experiences same-sex attraction, and yet he is committed to Scripture and the church's traditional position on sexuality. In this honest book, he shares his own experiences and shows us that obedience to Jesus is ultimately the only way to experience life to the full.

Who am I?
Who am I?

Author: Steven Reiss

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2002-03-05

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780425183403

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What do we want? What makes us tick? From acceptance to vengeance to curiosity, this book explains the 16 basic and universal desires that shape our behavior—and shows how the ways we prioritize them determines our personalities. Grounded in up-to-date psychological research, this book can help parents comprehend their children’s needs and behavior couples understand each other better employers motivate their employees employees become more effective in their work YOU achieve greater satisfaction and happiness in life

Larson's Book of World Religions and Alternative Spirituality
Larson's Book of World Religions and Alternative Spirituality

Author: Bob Larson

Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 596

ISBN-13: 9780842364171

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this indispensable reference tool for parents, students, and pastors alike, Larson analyzes dozens of world religions and spiritual movements from Islam to UFOs, New Age movements to witchcraft. This volume helps address tough questions from a biblical perspective.

Sovereignty and the Sacred
Sovereignty and the Sacred

Author: Robert A. Yelle

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-11-26

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 022658559X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sovereignty and the Sacred challenges contemporary models of polity and economy through a two-step engagement with the history of religions. Beginning with the recognition of the convergence in the history of European political theology between the sacred and the sovereign as creating “states of exception”—that is, moments of rupture in the normative order that, by transcending this order, are capable of re-founding or remaking it—Robert A. Yelle identifies our secular, capitalist system as an attempt to exclude such moments by subordinating them to the calculability of laws and markets. The second step marshals evidence from history and anthropology that helps us to recognize the contribution of such states of exception to ethical life, as a means of release from the legal or economic order. Yelle draws on evidence from the Hebrew Bible to English deism, and from the Aztecs to ancient India, to develop a theory of polity that finds a place and a purpose for those aspects of religion that are often marginalized and dismissed as irrational by Enlightenment liberalism and utilitarianism. Developing this close analogy between two elemental domains of society, Sovereignty and the Sacred offers a new theory of religion while suggesting alternative ways of organizing our political and economic life. By rethinking the transcendent foundations and liberating potential of both religion and politics, Yelle points to more hopeful and ethical modes of collective life based on egalitarianism and popular sovereignty. Deliberately countering the narrowness of currently dominant economic, political, and legal theories, he demonstrates the potential of a revived history of religions to contribute to a rethinking of the foundations of our political and social order.