Religion And The Western Mind

Author : Ninian Smart
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 1987-01-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0887063829

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Religion and the Western Mind by Ninian Smart Pdf

Ninian Smart believes that the modern study of religion should occur in the context of a radical reappraisal of our educational system. This is a worldview analysis of religion appropriate to today's global city. It attacks narrowness whether found in Western philosophy or Christian theology, and argues for a disestablishmentarian stance. Religion and the Western Mind presents the explosive possibilities of religions -- of world views that have the power to shape history. It offers a theory regarding the need of nations for religious justifications. It examines three fundamental backlashes: the Moral Majority, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Gush Emunim. It looks at the contrasting Indian and Sri Lankan responses to Western influence and delineates the Indian tradition in a new way. And finally it diagnoses the future, exploring the ethical inferences of the worldview and supporting a position that runs like a thread through this book.

Author : Richard Tarnas
Publisher : Ballantine Books
Page : 560 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2011-10-19
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780307804525

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Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas Pdf

"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'Westt's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.

Author : Tom Holland
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 624 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2019-10-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9780465093526

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Dominion by Tom Holland Pdf

A "marvelous" (Economist) account of how the Christian Revolution forged the Western imagination. Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion-an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus-was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history. Today, the West remains utterly saturated by Christian assumptions. As Tom Holland demonstrates, our morals and ethics are not universal but are instead the fruits of a very distinctive civilization. Concepts such as secularism, liberalism, science, and homosexuality are deeply rooted in a Christian seedbed. From Babylon to the Beatles, Saint Michael to #MeToo, Dominion tells the story of how Christianity transformed the modern world.

Author : Charles Freeman
Publisher : Random House
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2011-02-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781446419267

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The Closing Of The Western Mind by Charles Freeman Pdf

The conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity in 368 AD brought a transformation to Christianity and to western civilization, the effects of which we still feel today. Previously, the Roman empire had absorbed and sustained the Greek intellectual tradition which, in the astronomy of Ptolemy, the medicine of Galen and the philosophy of Plotinus, reached new heights. Constantine turned Rome from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilisation of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority. The century after Constantine's conversion saw the development of an alliance between church and state which stifled freedom of thought and the tradition of Greek rationalism which was intrinsic to it. The churches enjoyed enormous patronage and exemptions from tax, and in return allowed the emperors to take on the definition and enforcement of an increasingly narrow religious orthodoxy. This book explores how the European mind was closed by the revolution of the fourth century. It looks at the rise of the 'divine' monarch, the struggle as Christianity painfully separated itself from Judaism, the conflict between faith and reason, and the problems in finding any kind of rational basis for Christian theology. In these centuries, a turning-point for Western civilisation, we see the development of Christian anti-Semitism, the origins of the opposition of religion and science and the roots of Christianity's discomfort with sex, issues which haunt the Christian churches to this day. The Closing of the Western Mind is a major work of history. Wide-ranging and ambitious, its central theme is the relationship between the two wellsprings of our civilisation, the Judaeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman, and how the tensions between them have created the culture in which we continue to live, think and believe.

Author : Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 598 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2018-09-24
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004378933

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New Age Religion and Western Culture by Wouter J. Hanegraaff Pdf

Recent years have seen a spectacular rise of the New Age movement and an ever-increasing interest in its beliefs and manifestations. This fascinating work presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of New Age Religion and its historical backgrounds, thus providing the reader with a means of orientation in the bewildering variety of the movement. Making extensive use of primary sources, the author thematically analyses New Age beliefs from the perspective of the study of religions. While looking at the historical backgrounds of the movement, he convincingly argues that its foundations were laid by so-called western esoteric traditions during the Renaissance. Hanegraaff finally shows how the modern New Age movement emerged from the increasing secularization of those esoteric traditions during the 19th century. This ground-breaking publication is compulsive reading for all those involved or interested in the New Age movement.

Author : Noel B. Reynolds,W. Cole Durham
Publisher : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0802848532

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Religious Liberty in Western Thought by Noel B. Reynolds,W. Cole Durham Pdf

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. In this volume, several leading scholars harvest the best of Western thinking on religious liberty. An opening chapter shows how religious liberty emerged slowly in the West through centuries of cruel experience and growing enlightenment. Separate chapters thereafter take up the unique role of such titans as Marsilius, Luther, Calvin, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, Tocqueville, and the American framers in the Western drama of religious liberty. From widely divergent experiences, these titans discovered the cardinal principles of religious liberty -- religious pluralism and toleration, religious equality and non- discrimination, liberty of conscience and association, freedom of expression and exercise. From widely discordant convictions, they distilled the most enduring models of church and state and of religion and law in the West -- from the organic models of earlier centuries to the dualistic models of more recent times. Contributors: Brian Tierney Steven Ozment John Witte Jr. Joshua Mitchell W. Cole Durham Jr. Michael W. McConnell Ellis Sandoz Thomas L. Pangle

Author : Geoffrey Dobson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 776 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2016-06-16
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781315478715

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A Chaos of Delight by Geoffrey Dobson Pdf

Humans throughout history have sought ways of understanding their place within the world. Religion, science and myth have been at the forefront of this quest for meaning. A Chaos of Delight examines how various cultures – from the early Sumerians, Egyptians and Greeks to contemporary Western society – have looked at the same phenomena and devised totally different world views. The rise of modern science is examined, alongside questions of evolution and the origins of life. This comprehensive volume is an essential read for students and scholars interested in the history of ideas and the role of religion, science and myth in the development of Western thought.

Author : David Gelernter
Publisher : Doubleday
Page : 175 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2007-06-19
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780385522953

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Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion by David Gelernter Pdf

What does it mean to “believe” in America? Why do we always speak of our country as having a mission or purpose that is higher than other nations? Modern liberals have invested a great deal in the notion that America was founded as a secular state, with religion relegated to the private sphere. David Gelernter argues that America is not secular at all, but a powerful religious idea—indeed, a religion in its own right. Gelernter argues that what we have come to call “Americanism” is in fact a secular version of Zionism. Not the Zionism of the ancient Hebrews, but that of the Puritan founders who saw themselves as the new children of Israel, creating a new Jerusalem in a new world. Their faith-based ideals of liberty, equality, and democratic governance had a greater influence on the nation’s founders than the Enlightenment. Gelernter traces the development of the American religion from its roots in the Puritan Zionism of seventeenth-century New England to the idealistic fighting faith it has become, a militant creed dedicated to spreading freedom around the world. The central figures in this process were Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, who presided over the secularization of the American Zionist idea into the form we now know as Americanism. If America is a religion, it is a religion without a god, and it is a global religion. People who believe in America live all over the world. Its adherents have included oppressed and freedom-loving peoples everywhere—from the patriots of the Greek and Hungarian revolutions to the martyred Chinese dissidents of Tiananmen Square. Gelernter also shows that anti-Americanism, particularly the virulent kind that is found today in Europe, is a reaction against this religious conception of America on the part of those who adhere to a rival religion of pacifism and appeasement. A startlingly original argument about the religious meaning of America and why it is loved—and hated—with so much passion at home and abroad.

Author : John H. Kok
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1998-04
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0932914411

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Patterns of the Western Mind by John H. Kok Pdf

Author : Jonathan Haidt
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 530 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2013-02-12
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780307455772

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The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt Pdf

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.

Author : Jensine Andresen
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2001-06-28
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780521801522

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Religion in Mind by Jensine Andresen Pdf

Religion in Mind is a 2001 text which summarizes and extends the advances in the cognitive study of religion throughout the 1990s. It uses empirical research from psychology and anthropology to illuminate various components of religious belief, ritual, and experience. The book examines cognitive dimensions of religion within a naturalistic view of culture, while respecting the phenomenology of religion and drawing together teachers of religion, psychologists of religion, and cognitive scientists. Expert contributors focus on phenomena such as belief-fixation and transmission; attributions of agency; anthropomorphizing; counterintuitive religious representations; the well-formedness of religious rituals; links between religious representations and emotions; and the development of god concepts. The work encourages greater interdisciplinary linkages between scholars from different fields and will be of interest to researchers in anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, and cognitive science. It also will interest more general readers in religion and science.

Author : Geoffrey Samuel,Jay Johnston
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 476 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2013-04-12
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781136766473

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Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West by Geoffrey Samuel,Jay Johnston Pdf

Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy.

Author : P. J. Saher
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1969
Category : Mysticism
ISBN : STANFORD:36105033595104

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Eastern Wisdom and Western Thought by P. J. Saher Pdf

Author : C. G. Jung
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2020-09-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780691217994

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Psychology and Western Religion by C. G. Jung Pdf

Extracted from Volumes 11 and 18. This selection of Jung's writings brings together a number of articles that are necessary for the understanding of his interpretation of the religious life and development of Western man: views that are central to his psychological thought.

Author : Christopher Dawson
Publisher : CUA Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2012-08-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9780813218199

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Progress and Religion by Christopher Dawson Pdf

Progress and Religion was perhaps the most influential of all Christopher Dawson's books, establishing him as an interpreter of history and a historian of ideas.