Origins of the Gods

Origins of the Gods

Author: Andrew Collins

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 1591434106

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• Explores how our ancestors used shamanic rituals at sacred sites to create portals for communication with nonhuman intelligences • Shares supporting evidence from the spiritual and shamanic beliefs of more than 100 Native American tribes • Shows how the earliest forms of shamanism began at sites like Qesem Cave in Israel more than 400,000 years ago From Göbekli Tepe in Turkey to the Egyptian pyramids, from the stone circles of Europe to the mound complexes of the Americas, Andrew Collins and Gregory L. Little show how, again and again, our ancestors built permanent sites of ceremonial activity where geomagnetic and gravitational anomalies have been recorded. They investigate how the earliest forms of animism and shamanism began at sites like the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia and Qesem Cave in Israel more than 400,000 years ago. They explain how shamanic rituals and altered states of consciousness combine with the natural forces of the earth to create portals for contact with otherworldly realms—in other words, the gods of our ancestors were the result of an interaction between human consciousness and transdimensional intelligence. The authors show how the spiritual and shamanic beliefs of more than 100 Native American tribes align with their theory, and they reveal how some of these shamanic transdimensional portals are still active, sharing vivid examples from Skinwalker Ranch in Utah and Bempton in northern England. Ultimately, Collins and Little show how our modern disconnection from nature and lack of a fully visible night sky makes the manifestations from these ultraterrestrial intelligences seem random. If we can restore our spiritual connections, perhaps we can once again communicate with the higher dimensional beings who triggered the advancements of our earliest ancestors.


The Origin of the Gods

The Origin of the Gods

Author: Richard S. Caldwell

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0195072669

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Presented in clear, comprehensible language, this study first explains the aspects of psychoanalytic theory relevant to the understanding of Greek myth, and then interprets, using psychoanalytic methodology, the Greek myth of origin and succession, particularly as stated in Hesiod's Theogony. Caldwell's provocative study will appeal to a wide range of classicists, teachers and students of mythology, and those interested in the application of psychoanalytic methods to literature.


A History of God

A History of God

Author: Karen Armstrong

Publisher: Gramercy

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780517223123

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A study of the deity of the world's three dominant monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In a dynamic interplay between religion and society's ever-changing beliefs, values, and traditions, human beings' ideas about God have been transformed. Ideas about God have been molded to apply to the spiritual needs of the people who worship him in a particular place and time. The author explores and analyzes the development and progression of the various perceptions of God from the days of Abraham to present times--Adapted from book jacket.


The Origins of the Gods

The Origins of the Gods

Author: James S. Hans

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1991-01-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780791406601

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Based on Nietzsche's critique of religion and culture, and engaging the contemporary offshoots of that critique, this book assesses the myths of origins that have been used to articulate the fundamental attitude toward the relationship between shame and beauty. In reconsidering some of the myths upon which the West is based, from Hesiod and Greek mythology to Plato and the Bible, Hans pursues the ways in which we have habitually separated shame and beauty in order to create the grounds that would provide us with the authority for our lives we think we need. By juxtaposing Socrates' repression of violence in The Republic and Nietzsche's conception of the overman, the author revises the network of relations that are associated with the religious, the aesthetic, and the political, asserting that the religious derives from the aesthetic rather than the other way around, and establishing a necessary connection between the political and the aesthetic. Hans aims to raise yet again the questions embodied in Nietzsche's attempt to prompt humans to face the true status of their actions in the world: are we finally able to address our shame without immediately projecting it onto another or repressing it? If so, what changes might we see in the psychological, social, and political worlds we would create out of such an acknowledgment? What value is to be found in accepting the uneasy relationship between shame and beauty upon which our lives rest? While The Origins of the Gods provides no definitive answers to such questions simply because none are possible, it makes use of such queries in order to reassert the great importance of Nietzsche's affirmation of the value of the world as it is. It argues that this affirmation has something crucial to offer if we are willing to forgo an authorized existence and confront the beauty and shame from which our lives are inevitably constituted.


Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods

Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods

Author: E. Fuller Torrey

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0231544863

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Religions and mythologies from around the world teach that God or gods created humans. Atheist, humanist, and materialist critics, meanwhile, have attempted to turn theology on its head, claiming that religion is a human invention. In this book, E. Fuller Torrey draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to propose a startling answer to the ultimate question. Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods locates the origin of gods within the human brain, arguing that religious belief is a by-product of evolution. Based on an idea originally proposed by Charles Darwin, Torrey marshals evidence that the emergence of gods was an incidental consequence of several evolutionary factors. Using data ranging from ancient skulls and artifacts to brain imaging, primatology, and child development studies, this book traces how new cognitive abilities gave rise to new behaviors. For instance, autobiographical memory, the ability to project ourselves backward and forward in time, gave Homo sapiens a competitive advantage. However, it also led to comprehension of mortality, spurring belief in an alternative to death. Torrey details the neurobiological sequence that explains why the gods appeared when they did, connecting archaeological findings including clothing, art, farming, and urbanization to cognitive developments. This book does not dismiss belief but rather presents religious belief as an inevitable outcome of brain evolution. Providing clear and accessible explanations of evolutionary neuroscience, Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods will shed new light on the mechanics of our deepest mysteries.


Religion of the Gods

Religion of the Gods

Author: Kimberley Christine Patton

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-02-09

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0199723281

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In many of the world's religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, a seemingly enigmatic and paradoxical image is found--that of the god who worships. Various interpretations of this seeming paradox have been advanced. Some suggest that it represents sacrifice to a higher deity. Proponents of anthropomorphic projection say that the gods are just "big people" and that images of human religious action are simply projected onto the deities. However, such explanations do not do justice to the complexity and diversity of this phenomenon. In Religion of the Gods, Kimberley C. Patton uses a comparative approach to take up anew a longstanding challenge in ancient Greek religious iconography: why are the Olympian gods depicted on classical pottery making libations? The sacrificing gods in ancient Greece are compared to gods who perform rituals in six other religious traditions: the Vedic gods, the heterodox god Zurvan of early Zoroastrianism, the Old Norse god Odin, the Christian God and Christ, the God of Judaism, and Islam's Allah. Patton examines the comparative evidence from a cultural and historical perspective, uncovering deep structural resonances while also revealing crucial differences. Instead of looking for invisible recipients or lost myths, Patton proposes the new category of "divine reflexivity." Divinely performed ritual is a self-reflexive, self-expressive action that signals the origin of ritual in the divine and not the human realm. Above all, divine ritual is generative, both instigating and inspiring human religious activity. The religion practiced by the gods is both like and unlike human religious action. Seen from within the religious tradition, gods are not "big people," but other than human. Human ritual is directed outward to a divine being, but the gods practice ritual on their own behalf. "Cultic time," the symbiotic performance of ritual both in heaven and on earth, collapses the distinction between cult and theology each time ritual is performed. Offering the first comprehensive study and a new theory of this fascinating phenomenon, Religion of the Gods is a significant contribution to the fields of classics and comparative religion. Patton shows that the god who performs religious action is not an anomaly, but holds a meaningful place in the category of ritual and points to a phenomenologically universal structure within religion itself.


Discovering God

Discovering God

Author: Rodney Stark

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-03-17

Total Pages: 605

ISBN-13: 006174333X

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Winner of the 2008 Christianity Today Award of Merit in Theology/Ethics The History of God In Discovering God, award-winning sociologist Rodney Stark presents a monumental history of the origins of the great religions from the Stone Age to the Modern Age and wrestles with the central questions of religion and belief.


God

God

Author: Reza Aslan

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2017-11-07

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0553394738

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of Zealot explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle


Origin

Origin

Author: Pedro Urvi

Publisher:

Published: 2017-08-29

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 9781549610806

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Book One in the international bestselling Science Fiction-Fantasy series. Prequel series to the bestselling The Ilenian Enigma. A dystopian fantasy action adventure for all ages. An epic adventure full of action in an amazing dystopian world. Join thousand of readers from all over the world in this thrilling experience. An epic adventure in a breathtaking universe. Science Fiction, fantasy, magic, in a never seen before dystopian setting. Discover a fascinating world ruled by merciless Gods. Join the slaved people of the seas in their quest for freedom and survival. Entrancing characters you will love. Experience an exotic world, mystery, and non stop action. A story with intense romance and passionate characters. Sword fight, magic, thrill, in a coming of age story of love and honor. Synopsis: In a dystopic world, the Senoca, the People of the Sea have been enslaved by the Golden Gods. They live within the limits of the Boundary, for only one purpose: produce for the Gods or die. Kyra, a seventeen-year-old girl, is selected, along with other young girls, and taken to the Gods. Her brother Ikai will move heaven and earth to find her. They will fight for survival, confronting a society constituted to serve the masters, and even the Gods themselves in their eternal dwelling. A story of love, survival, sacrifice, and the fight for freedom. The Golden Gods: ORIGIN (Book #1) REBELLION (Book #2) A saga that will keep you gripped! Scroll up and buy to start the adventure today!