What would biology look like if it took the problem of natural evil seriously? This book argues that biological descriptions of evolution are inherently moral, just as the biblical story of creation has biological implications. A complete account of evolution will therefore require theological input. The Dome of Eden does not try to harmonize evolution and creation. Harmonizers typically begin with Darwinism and then try to add just enough religion to make evolution more palatable, or they begin with Genesis and pry open the creation account just wide enough to let in a little bit of evolution. By contrast, Stephen Webb provides a theory of how evolution and theology fit together, and he argues that this kind of theory is required by the internal demands of both theology and biology. The Dome of Eden also develops a theological account of evolution that is distinct from the intelligent design movement. Webb shows how intelligent design properly discerns the inescapable dimension of purpose in nature but, like Darwinism itself, fails to make sense of the problem of natural evil. Finally, this book draws on the work of Karl Barth to advance a new reading of the Genesis narrative and the theology of Duns Scotus to provide the necessary metaphysical foundation for evolutionary thought.
When it comes to contemporary war, The Devils of Eden is one of the most accurate stories written. The memoir is told from the perspective of a paratrooper from the arrival at his unit, through the occupation of Firebase Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The narrative follows a squad of recon paratroopers for a four month period of what was called by Time Magazine, the most dangerous place on earth. Each character is a disparate representation of the array of attitudes and perspectives concerning life in contemporary American the Afghanistan War, and the human condition in general.
An American Benedictine monk chronicles the year he lived among the Coptic monks of Egypt, detailing a mysterious, spiritually challenging world saturated in prayer and silence. Original.
In the shadow of the Vietnam War, a significant part of an entire generation refused their assigned roles in the American century. Some took their revolutionary politics to the streets, others decided simply to turn away, seeking to build another world together, outside the state and the market. West of Eden charts the remarkable flowering of communalism in the 1960s and ’70s, fueled by a radical rejection of the Cold War corporate deal, utopian visions of a peaceful green planet, the new technologies of sound and light, and the ancient arts of ecstatic release. The book focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area and its hinterlands, which have long been creative spaces for social experiment. Haight-Ashbury’s gift economy—its free clinic, concerts, and street theatre—and Berkeley’s liberated zones—Sproul Plaza, Telegraph Avenue, and People’s Park—were embedded in a wider network of producer and consumer co-ops, food conspiracies, and collective schemes. Using memoir and flashbacks, oral history and archival sources, West of Eden explores the deep historical roots and the enduring, though often disavowed, legacies of the extraordinary pulse of radical energies that generated forms of collective life beyond the nuclear family and the world of private consumption, including the contradictions evident in such figures as the guru/predator or the hippie/entrepreneur. There are vivid portraits of life on the rural communes of Mendocino and Sonoma, and essays on the Black Panther communal households in Oakland, the latter-day Diggers of San Francisco, the Native American occupation of Alcatraz, the pioneers of live/work space for artists, and the Bucky dome as the iconic architectural form of the sixties. Due to the prevailing amnesia—partly imposed by official narratives, partly self-imposed in the aftermath of defeat—West of Eden is not only a necessary act of reclamation, helping to record the unwritten stories of the motley generation of communards and antinomians now passing, but is also intended as an offering to the coming generation who will find here, in the rubble of the twentieth century, a past they can use—indeed one they will need—in the passage from the privations of commodity capitalism to an ample life in common.
The world had fallen. The mostly vacant cities were silent now. For those who had not been turned or consumed, remote locations proved the best chance to live a while longer before the inevitable end landed its teeth marks on their flesh or its disease in their blood. To eat or be eaten was the last imperative of the once noble species. All the accoutrements of being the most civilized of creatures had faded away and the human beast had been returned to the savagery of the primordial forest. This was the truth everywhere in the world, except one place—a small island, forgotten before and after the fall, a place where the sun yet shined down onto hopeful souls, 117 souls, the children of the Eden Project, who lived all their days until now in a great, glass dome. They were the children of light, pure blooded, uninfected, but they all knew (down to the smallest among them) that these hours of eternal incandescence were numbered. They all knew, every moment they breathed, that their destinies awaited them outside the glass, where darkness forever reigned. NIGHT WITHOUT END (Book Two of The Eden Project) now available
Taking Back Eden is a set of case studies of environmental lawsuits brought in eight countries around the world, including the U.S, beginning in the 1960s. The book conveys what is in fact a revolution in the field of law: ordinary citizens (and lawyers) using their standing as citizens in challenging corporate practices and government policies to change not just the way the environment is defended but the way that the public interest is recognized in law. Oliver Houck, a well-known environmental attorney, professor of law, and extraordinary storyteller, vividly depicts the places protected, as well as the litigants who pursued the cases, their strategies, and the judges and other government officials who ruled on them. This book will appeal to upperclass undergraduates, graduate students, and to all citizens interested in protecting the environment.
West of Eden is the definitive story of Hollywood, told, in their own words, by the people on the inside: Lauren Bacall, Arthur Miller, Dennis Hopper, Frank Gehry, Ring Lardner, Joan Didion, Stephen Sondheim – all interviewed by Jean Stein, who grew up in the Forties in a fairytale mansion in the Hollywood Hills. The book takes us from the discovery of oil in the Twenties with the story of the tycoon Edward Doheny (There Will Be Blood) and traces the growth of corruption through the syndicates, the mob, and the movie studios – from the beginnings of the film industry to the end, with News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch (who bought the Stein mansion in 1985). West of Eden is about money, power, fame and terrible secrets: the doomed Hollywood of the late Fifties, early Sixties – ‘the rotten heart of paradise’. Like her last book, the best-selling Edie, this is an oral history told through brilliantly edited interviews. As this is Hollywood, it’s a book full of sex, drugs and celebrity glamour; but because it’s built from the firsthand accounts of people who were actually there, many of them writers, actors and artists, it’s also strangely claustrophobic, seductive, and completely compelling.
While researching information for the publication of my 9th book The Flat Earth As Key To Decrypt The Book Of Enoch, I was led to understanding that not only does the Bible support premise that the earth is a flat circular plane but that it is covered by the firmament as a solid transparent dome like canopy. This led me to revisit the canonical and extra Biblical texts such as The Book Of Enoch, The Book Of Jasher, The Book Of Jubilees, and myriad others, to see if not only did they affirm such idea but if they contained other little known insight which might expound upon this matter in some detailed manner. This book is the end result of that search and compilation of all of those source references. And because I include in this study much extra Biblical material which few are familiar with, I doubt one will be able to find a more complete investigation of the firmament as topic than that which is presented here. The seeker of lost paradise may seem a fool to those whom have never sought the other worlds
EDEN is two stories: one fictional, one fact. The fiction: Calif De'Alsace, a man devoted to the dissemination of life across the galaxy, has taken a group of one hundred artists and scientists to a sterile world named Eden for the purpose of bioengineering living works of art. Calif, an Ankh idealist, has decreed that no weapons be brought and that the group create a "paradise of peace where beauty...not the law of tooth and claw...reigns." Unknown to the Eden group, Calif was forced by a powerful man to include an artist, Iamoendi, who has secretly been using drugs to enhance his imaging abilities. Iamoendi, who is descended from Fundamentalist factions that fought in the Religionist Wars, slowly goes insane. Believing himself an instrument of god, Iamoendi turns against Project Eden. He obtains the genome libraries (programmed instructions for bioengineering plants and animals) for insects and arachnids. Subsequently, he creates an army of huge insect warriors, and launches a secret attack against Project Eden. Thirteen survive Iamoendi's attack. Weaponless, they are forced to create living weapons in defense. With the battle lines drawn, the war begins. The survivors create a surprise defense of giganticized ant lions, trapdoor spiders, and carnivorous plants. They defeat Iamoendi's army, but Iamoendi escapes. Two more battles ensue in which Iamoendi's attacking monstrosities become increasingly bizarre and surreal. More and more survivors die with each battle leading to an ending both poignant and transcendent. The fact: In the spirit of Coleridge and Poe who used an opiate to enhance their poetic imagery, in the spirit of Huxley whose use of peyote awakened his awareness to the creative use of mind-altering substances, I have set down my own experiences with altered states as they relate to my creation of EDEN. My intent is to share my insights into the creative process as well as the source and derivation of both the philosophy underlying EDEN and the hallucinatory visions used in the telling of this story. It is a first person account of how, after being accidentally introduced to a hallucinogen, my subsequent use and experimentation became the stuff and substance of my novel EDEN.