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Author: Kevin Twain Lowery
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2007-10-30
Total Pages: 180
ISBN-13: 0826498531
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book explores the nature and dynamics of religious belief, and offers constructive criticism to promote its intellectual maturity.
Author: Costi W. Hinn
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2021-09-28
Total Pages: 193
ISBN-13: 0310362873
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow does healing fit into God's will, especially when God doesn't heal? Our hearts, our bodies, and our world are desperate for healing. We all experience brokenness, and we rightfully look to Jesus for restoration. But many Christians have been taught the lie that God will heal us if our faith is strong enough, and that he is punishing us when bad things happen. Growing up in one of the world's leading faith-healing dynasties, Costi Hinn witnessed the tragedy of people chasing after healing more than the Healer. In this book he provides biblical clarity to some of the most challenging questions of the Christian faith. Does grace guarantee healing? How do we catch ourselves from slipping into the trap of seeking God for what he can do for us and not for who he really is? Beginning with the vivid memory of the night he discovered his son's cancer diagnosis—Costi unpacks the layered feelings and questions we have about God and his healing power, and he provides practical principles for growing closer to Jesus. With gentle clarity and biblical wisdom, he explains how to: Faithfully pray for healing while trusting in God's sovereignty. Navigate tough conversations about the topics of divine healing, love, and justice. Hold on to faith even in the most painful trials. More than chasing after the Jesus we want, this hopeful and encouraging book will guide you to discovering the Jesus we truly need—and the true power and hope that comes from a genuine relationship with him.
Author: Charles M. Johnston MD
Publisher: ICD Press
Published: 2015-05-29
Total Pages: 638
ISBN-13: 9780974715445
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Futureis the most detailed of three new future-related works by the author. It looks deeply at how the most important challenges ahead for the species will require not just better ideas, but new human capacities; in the end, an essential "growing up" as a species-a new Cultural Maturity. It is written for those inter- ested in acquiring the newly sophisticated leadership abilities that we will more and more need in all parts of our lives in times ahead. The concept of Cultural Maturity makes understandable how institutional structures and beliefs that in modern times have served us well can't be the ideals and end points that we have assumed them to be. It goes on to articulate a new guiding story for our time, one able to take us equally beyond denial, cynicism, and naïve wishful thinking. This book looks deeply at the changes the concept of Cultural Maturity describes-both how they make needed new capacities possible, and how we see their beginnings in many parts of our personal and collective lives. The concept of Cultural Maturity is based on the ideas of Creative Systems Theory, a comprehensive framework for understanding change, purpose, and interrelationship in human systems. Creative Systems Theory describes how Cultural Maturity's changes are as, or more, significant than those that brought us modern democratic governance 250 years ago. It also argues that if the concept of Cultural Maturity is not basically correct, it is hard to imagine a healthy and vital human future. In addition to introducing the concept of Cultural Maturity, Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future presents important related ideas from Creative Systems Theory. Creative Systems Theory represents an example of culturally mature conception and offers a rich array of conceptual tools able to guide us in making the future's increasingly complex choices.
Author: J. L. Schellenberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013-06-13
Total Pages: 185
ISBN-13: 0199673764
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJ.L. Schellenberg offers a path to a new kind of religious outlook. Reflection on our early stage in the evolutionary process leads to skepticism about religion, but also offers a new answer to the problem of faith and reason, and the possibility of a new, evolutionary form of religion.
Author: Justin L. Barrett
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2012-03-20
Total Pages: 303
ISBN-13: 1439196575
DOWNLOAD EBOOKInfants have a lot to make sense of in the world: Why does the sun shine and night fall; why do some objects move in response to words, while others won’t budge; who is it that looks over them and cares for them? How the developing brain grapples with these and other questions leads children, across cultures, to naturally develop a belief in a divine power of remarkably consistent traits––a god that is a powerful creator, knowing, immortal, and good—explains noted developmental psychologist and anthropologist Justin L. Barrett in this enlightening and provocative book. In short, we are all born believers. Belief begins in the brain. Under the sway of powerful internal and external influences, children understand their environments by imagining at least one creative and intelligent agent, a grand creator and controller that brings order and purpose to the world. Further, these beliefs in unseen super beings help organize children’s intuitions about morality and surprising life events, making life meaningful. Summarizing scientific experiments conducted with children across the globe, Professor Barrett illustrates the ways human beings have come to develop complex belief systems about God’s omniscience, the afterlife, and the immortality of deities. He shows how the science of childhood religiosity reveals, across humanity, a “natural religion,” the organization of those beliefs that humans gravitate to organically, and how it underlies all of the world’s major religions, uniting them under one common source. For believers and nonbelievers alike, Barrett offers a compelling argument for the human instinct for religion, as he guides all parents in how to effectively encourage children in developing a healthy constellation of beliefs about the world around them.
Author: Adriana Alfaro Altamirano
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2021-04-23
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 0812252934
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWithin the Western tradition, it was the philosophers Henri Bergson and Max Scheler who laid out and explored the nonrational power of "intuition" at work in human beings that plays a key role in orienting their thinking and action within the world. As author Adriana Alfaro Altamirano notes, Bergon's and Scheler's philosophical explorations, which paralleled similar developments by other modernist writers, artists, and political actors of the early twentieth century, can yield fruitful insights into the ideas and passions that animate politics in our own time. The Belief in Intuition shows that intuition (as Bergson and Scheler understood it) leads, first and foremost, to a conception of freedom that is especially suited for dealing with hierarchy, uncertainty, and alterity. Such a conception of freedom is grounded in a sense of individuality that remains true to its "inner multiplicity," thus providing a distinct contrast to and critique of the liberal notion of the self. Focusing on the complex inner lives that drive human action, as Bergson and Scheler did, leads us to appreciate the moral and empirical limits of liberal devices that mean to regulate our actions "from the outside." Such devices, like the law, may not only carry pernicious effects for freedom but, more troublingly, oftentimes "erase their traces," concealing the very ways in which they are detrimental to a richer experience of subjectivity. According to Alfaro Altamirano, Bergson's and Scheler's conception of intuition and personal authority puts contemporary discussions about populism in a different light: It shows that liberalism would only at its own peril deny the anthropological, moral, and political importance of the bearers of charismatic authority. Personal authority thus understood relies on a dense, but elusive, notion of personality, for which personal authority is not only consistent with freedom, but even contributes to it in decisive ways.
Author: Luca Paladini
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2023-09-30
Total Pages: 438
ISBN-13: 3031345037
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book offers an in-depth analysis of a fundamental human freedom and a cornerstone of democracy: the Freedom of Religions or Beliefs (FoRB). The book focuses on the legal protection and promotion of FoRB in Europe because, in this context, exercising this right goes beyond a mere internal positioning in terms of legislation; rather, it is influenced by international and supranational case law, as well as the promotional activities of selected non-state subjects of international law. The content is divided into three sections: Part I on the European Convention of Human Rights, Part II on the EU, and Part III on other international actors. The first two Parts examine FoRB in its systematic aspects and “day-to-day” aspects. In contrast, the third Part highlights the promotional activities carried out by the Holy See, the ILO, the Council of Europe (“beyond the Strasbourg Court”), and the OSCE to promote, recommend or otherwise support it. Overall, the volume highlights how the exercise of FoRB can be ensured via international and supranational legal protection (both normative and judicial) and via promotional activities aimed at encouraging and helping states guarantee tolerance and pluralism in their national legislation. The 16 main chapters offer a broad overview of the topic under investigation. Each contribution can be seen as a stand-alone study and, simultaneously, as a link in a chain of legal analysis that connects multiple FoRB-focused questions. The book offers a valuable tool for all readers with an academic or professional interest in FoRB and those who have to address the issue of how to protect this freedom. It is intended not only for academics who work in the field of law but also for legal practitioners (judges, lawyers, diplomats), human rights advocates, members of religious and spiritual communities, policymakers and students.
Author: Heiner Bielefeldt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-01-21
Total Pages: 701
ISBN-13: 0191009180
DOWNLOAD EBOOKViolations of religious freedom and violence committed in the name of religion grab our attention on a daily basis. Freedom of religion or belief is a key human right: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, numerous conventions, declarations and soft law standards include specific provisions on freedom of religion or belief. The 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief has been interpreted since 1986 by the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief. Special Rapporteurs (for example those on racism, freedom of expression, minority issues and cultural rights) and Treaty Bodies (for example the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the Committee on the Rights of the Child) have also elaborated on freedom of religion or belief in the context of their respective mandates. Freedom of Religion or Belief: An International Law Commentary is the first commentary to look comprehensively at the international provisions for the protection of freedom of religion or belief, considering how they are interpreted by various United Nations Special Procedures and Treaty Bodies. Structured around the thematic categories of the United Nations Special Rapporteur's framework for communications, the commentary analyses, for example, the limitations on the wearing of religious symbols and vulnerable situations, including those of women, detainees, refugees, children, minorities and migrants, through a combination of scholarly expertise and practical experience.
Author: Perry G. Downs
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 1994
Total Pages: 228
ISBN-13: 9780310593706
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTeaching for Spiritual Growth is a textbook that explains what it means to be spiritually mature and how churches can help people achieve spiritual growth.
Author: Graham Richards
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2011-06-02
Total Pages: 178
ISBN-13: 1441971734
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNeither a book about the psychology of spirituality nor America’s ongoing turf wars between religion and science, Psychology, Religion, and the Nature of the Soul takes to task many of the presumed relationships between the two—from sharing common concerns to diametrically hostile opposites—to analyze the myriad functions religion and psychology play in our understanding of the human life and mind. Graham Richards takes the historical and philosophical long view in these rigorous and readable essays, which trace three long-running and potentially outmoded threads: that psychology and religion are irrelevant to each other, that they are complementary and should collaborate, and that one will eventually replace the other. He references a stunning variety of texts (from Freud and Allport to Karen Armstrong and Paul Tillich) reflecting the evolution of these ideas over the decades, to emphasize both the complexity of the issues and the enduring lack of easy answers. The eloquence of the writing and passionate objectivity of the argument will interest readers on all sides of the debate as the author examines: the religious origins of psychology, the original dichotomy: mythos versus logos, the authenticity of religious experience, Religion and personality, the problematic role of prayer and Religion in the history of psychotherapy. For those making a serious study of the history of psychology, Psychology, Religion, and the Nature of the Soul will inspire a fresh wave of critical discussion and inquiry.
