Author: Stuart A Kauffman
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 046501240X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Consider the woven integrated complexity of a living cell after 3.8 billion years of evolution. Is it more awe-inspiring to suppose that a transcendent God fashioned the cell, or to consider that the living organism was created by the evolving biosphere? As the eminent complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman explains in this ambitious and groundbreaking new book, people who do not believe in God have largely lost their sense of the sacred and the deep human legitimacy of our inherited spirituality. For those who believe in a Creator God, no science will ever disprove that belief. In Reinventing the Sacred, Kauffman argues that the science of complexity provides a way to move beyond reductionist science to something new: a unified culture where we see God in the creativity of the universe, biosphere, and humanity. Kauffman explains that the ceaseless natural creativity of the world can be a profound source of meaning, wonder, and further grounding of our place in the universe. His theory carries with it a new ethic for an emerging civilization and a reinterpretation of the divine. He asserts that we are impelled by the imperative of life itself to live with faith and courage-and the fact that we do so is indeed sublime. Reinventing the Sacred will change the way we all think about the evolution of humanity, the universe, faith, and reason.
Reinventing the Sacred
Author: Stuart A Kauffman
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 046501240X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Consider the woven integrated complexity of a living cell after 3.8 billion years of evolution. Is it more awe-inspiring to suppose that a transcendent God fashioned the cell, or to consider that the living organism was created by the evolving biosphere? As the eminent complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman explains in this ambitious and groundbreaking new book, people who do not believe in God have largely lost their sense of the sacred and the deep human legitimacy of our inherited spirituality. For those who believe in a Creator God, no science will ever disprove that belief. In Reinventing the Sacred, Kauffman argues that the science of complexity provides a way to move beyond reductionist science to something new: a unified culture where we see God in the creativity of the universe, biosphere, and humanity. Kauffman explains that the ceaseless natural creativity of the world can be a profound source of meaning, wonder, and further grounding of our place in the universe. His theory carries with it a new ethic for an emerging civilization and a reinterpretation of the divine. He asserts that we are impelled by the imperative of life itself to live with faith and courage-and the fact that we do so is indeed sublime. Reinventing the Sacred will change the way we all think about the evolution of humanity, the universe, faith, and reason.
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 046501240X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Consider the woven integrated complexity of a living cell after 3.8 billion years of evolution. Is it more awe-inspiring to suppose that a transcendent God fashioned the cell, or to consider that the living organism was created by the evolving biosphere? As the eminent complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman explains in this ambitious and groundbreaking new book, people who do not believe in God have largely lost their sense of the sacred and the deep human legitimacy of our inherited spirituality. For those who believe in a Creator God, no science will ever disprove that belief. In Reinventing the Sacred, Kauffman argues that the science of complexity provides a way to move beyond reductionist science to something new: a unified culture where we see God in the creativity of the universe, biosphere, and humanity. Kauffman explains that the ceaseless natural creativity of the world can be a profound source of meaning, wonder, and further grounding of our place in the universe. His theory carries with it a new ethic for an emerging civilization and a reinterpretation of the divine. He asserts that we are impelled by the imperative of life itself to live with faith and courage-and the fact that we do so is indeed sublime. Reinventing the Sacred will change the way we all think about the evolution of humanity, the universe, faith, and reason.
Redefining the Sacred
Author: Elizabeth Frood
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture and society
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
This launch volume of the series "Contextualising the Sacred" explores the changing social, religious, and political meanings of sacred space in the ancient Near East through bringing together the work of leading scholars of ancient history, Assyriology, classical archaeology, Egyptology and philology. Redefining the Sacred originates in an international European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop of the same name held at the University of Oxford in 2009, and is the launch volume for the series Contextualising the Sacred. It comprises eight studies written by leading scholars, each of whom investigates aspects of the diverse and changing meanings of sacred environments in the Near East and Egypt from c. 1000 BC to AD 300. This was a time of dramatic social, political, and religious transformation in the region, and religious architecture, which was central to ancient environments, is a productive interpretive lens through which implications of these changes can be examined across cultural borders. Analysis of the development of urban, sub-urban, and extra-urban sanctuaries, as well as the written sources associated with them, shows how the religious identities of individuals, groups, and societies were shaped, transformed, and interconnected. By bringing together ancient historians, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, archaeologists, and philologists, the volume highlights the immense potential of diachronic studies of sacred space, which the series will take forward.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture and society
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
This launch volume of the series "Contextualising the Sacred" explores the changing social, religious, and political meanings of sacred space in the ancient Near East through bringing together the work of leading scholars of ancient history, Assyriology, classical archaeology, Egyptology and philology. Redefining the Sacred originates in an international European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop of the same name held at the University of Oxford in 2009, and is the launch volume for the series Contextualising the Sacred. It comprises eight studies written by leading scholars, each of whom investigates aspects of the diverse and changing meanings of sacred environments in the Near East and Egypt from c. 1000 BC to AD 300. This was a time of dramatic social, political, and religious transformation in the region, and religious architecture, which was central to ancient environments, is a productive interpretive lens through which implications of these changes can be examined across cultural borders. Analysis of the development of urban, sub-urban, and extra-urban sanctuaries, as well as the written sources associated with them, shows how the religious identities of individuals, groups, and societies were shaped, transformed, and interconnected. By bringing together ancient historians, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, archaeologists, and philologists, the volume highlights the immense potential of diachronic studies of sacred space, which the series will take forward.
Redefining Ancient Orphism
Author: Radcliffe G. Edmonds III
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107038219
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Book Description
In a paradigm shift, this book redefines Orphism as a polemical label for extra-ordinary religion, good or bad.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107038219
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Book Description
In a paradigm shift, this book redefines Orphism as a polemical label for extra-ordinary religion, good or bad.
Why Men Made God
Author: R a Fleming
Publisher: Redefining the Sacred (International)
ISBN: 9780957261228
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
Why do we have only one deity when there used to be so many? Where did the idea of marriage come from? What was so significant about grain? How did the disparity between rich and poor begin? When did we go from revering the Earth to treating it like a resource to be plundered? The answers are in our stories. We Humans have been telling stories since our earliest beginnings. The stories grew in the telling until they became the myths and legends that framed our cultural beliefs. They explained our world and taught us how to treat one another. The consequences, for better or worse, cannot easily be escaped. Why Men Made God coalesces the stories that led to modern Western culture into a chronological narrative. New insights and patterns emerge. Gradual changes in our attitudes toward gender and power, toward property and the earth become clear. These changes are mirrored in the supernatural deities that were worshipped in each cultural stage along the way. A global climate crisis threatens all of us. How we talk about it is affecting how we deal with it. Understanding what our stories were and how they evolved empowers us to change the story we tell now, and in so doing, change our future.
Publisher: Redefining the Sacred (International)
ISBN: 9780957261228
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
Why do we have only one deity when there used to be so many? Where did the idea of marriage come from? What was so significant about grain? How did the disparity between rich and poor begin? When did we go from revering the Earth to treating it like a resource to be plundered? The answers are in our stories. We Humans have been telling stories since our earliest beginnings. The stories grew in the telling until they became the myths and legends that framed our cultural beliefs. They explained our world and taught us how to treat one another. The consequences, for better or worse, cannot easily be escaped. Why Men Made God coalesces the stories that led to modern Western culture into a chronological narrative. New insights and patterns emerge. Gradual changes in our attitudes toward gender and power, toward property and the earth become clear. These changes are mirrored in the supernatural deities that were worshipped in each cultural stage along the way. A global climate crisis threatens all of us. How we talk about it is affecting how we deal with it. Understanding what our stories were and how they evolved empowers us to change the story we tell now, and in so doing, change our future.
Art of Estrangement
Author: Pamela Anne Patton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271053836
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
"Examines the influential role of visual images in reinforcing the efforts of Spain's Christian-ruled kingdoms to renegotiate the role of their Jewish minority following the territorial expansions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries"--Provided by publisher.
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271053836
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
"Examines the influential role of visual images in reinforcing the efforts of Spain's Christian-ruled kingdoms to renegotiate the role of their Jewish minority following the territorial expansions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries"--Provided by publisher.
Ethics and the Future of Religion
Author: W. Royce Clark
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1978708653
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Book Description
W. Royce Clark observes that humanity appears to be jeopardizing our own future in a chaos of mutual antagonism and hypocrisy. Religions have traditionally provided ethical guidance, but because their absolutized metaphysics are incompatible with each other, we cannot rely on any one of them in a religiously pluralistic culture. The ethics of various religions are also built on theocratic or authoritarian foundations which are incompatible with any democratic society. Finally, many of their premises are very ancient, so not relevant or appropriate in our modern scientific world. The Western Enlightenment brought challenges against religion’s singularity, exclusivity, heteronomy, and anti-scientific assumptions, all of which disrupted their ethics and the Absolute metaphysical grounds upon which those ethics rested, raising the question of whether a “freestanding” ethic was possible. Inasmuch as the primary claim of most religions was regarded as beyond challenge, but was a conflation of history and myth, modern historical method created more doubt than certainty about such allegedly certain doctrines as “Jesus is the Son of God.” By the end of the 20th century, the impossibility of validating suchprimary Christological claims from a historical approach became evident, despite the articulate attempts at credibility in the brilliant works of John Dominic Crossan and Wolfhart Pannenberg, which remained unconvincing in important ways. Between 1832 and 2014, innovative Christian theologians such as Schleiermacher, Hegel, Tillich, and Scharlemann took a detour from the futility of historical verification. This study examines their remarkable attempts at a form of “corroboration” of the basic Christological claim, even if their primary interests were more in Christology than ethics. The question Clark takes up here is whether or not these figures have thereby provided a base for a universal ethic, or the only answer is for principles “freestanding” from any religion?
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1978708653
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 476
Book Description
W. Royce Clark observes that humanity appears to be jeopardizing our own future in a chaos of mutual antagonism and hypocrisy. Religions have traditionally provided ethical guidance, but because their absolutized metaphysics are incompatible with each other, we cannot rely on any one of them in a religiously pluralistic culture. The ethics of various religions are also built on theocratic or authoritarian foundations which are incompatible with any democratic society. Finally, many of their premises are very ancient, so not relevant or appropriate in our modern scientific world. The Western Enlightenment brought challenges against religion’s singularity, exclusivity, heteronomy, and anti-scientific assumptions, all of which disrupted their ethics and the Absolute metaphysical grounds upon which those ethics rested, raising the question of whether a “freestanding” ethic was possible. Inasmuch as the primary claim of most religions was regarded as beyond challenge, but was a conflation of history and myth, modern historical method created more doubt than certainty about such allegedly certain doctrines as “Jesus is the Son of God.” By the end of the 20th century, the impossibility of validating suchprimary Christological claims from a historical approach became evident, despite the articulate attempts at credibility in the brilliant works of John Dominic Crossan and Wolfhart Pannenberg, which remained unconvincing in important ways. Between 1832 and 2014, innovative Christian theologians such as Schleiermacher, Hegel, Tillich, and Scharlemann took a detour from the futility of historical verification. This study examines their remarkable attempts at a form of “corroboration” of the basic Christological claim, even if their primary interests were more in Christology than ethics. The question Clark takes up here is whether or not these figures have thereby provided a base for a universal ethic, or the only answer is for principles “freestanding” from any religion?
Finding Our Way Home
Author: Myke Johnson
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1365566862
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 181
Book Description
In this time of ecological crisis, all that is holy calls us into a more intimate partnership with the diverse and beautiful beings of this earth. In Finding Our Way Home, Myke Johnson reflects on her personal journey into such a partnership and offers a guide for others to begin this path. Lyrically expressed, it weaves together lessons from a chamomile flower, a small bird, a copper beech tree, a garden slug, and a forest fern, along with insights from Indigenous philosophy, environmental science, fractal geometry, childhood Catholic mysticism, the prophet Elijah, fairy tales, and permaculture design. This eco-spiritual journey also wrestles with the history of our society's destruction of the natural world, and its roots in the original theft of the land from Indigenous peoples. Exploring the spiritual dimensions of our brokenness, it offers tools to create healing. Finding Our Way Home is a ceremony to remember our essential unity with all of life.
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1365566862
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 181
Book Description
In this time of ecological crisis, all that is holy calls us into a more intimate partnership with the diverse and beautiful beings of this earth. In Finding Our Way Home, Myke Johnson reflects on her personal journey into such a partnership and offers a guide for others to begin this path. Lyrically expressed, it weaves together lessons from a chamomile flower, a small bird, a copper beech tree, a garden slug, and a forest fern, along with insights from Indigenous philosophy, environmental science, fractal geometry, childhood Catholic mysticism, the prophet Elijah, fairy tales, and permaculture design. This eco-spiritual journey also wrestles with the history of our society's destruction of the natural world, and its roots in the original theft of the land from Indigenous peoples. Exploring the spiritual dimensions of our brokenness, it offers tools to create healing. Finding Our Way Home is a ceremony to remember our essential unity with all of life.
Housing the Chosen
Author: Inge Nielsen
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503544373
Category : Architecture and religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The architecture of ancient religious spaces has the potential to offer a deeper understanding of the religious groups who used the spaces and the activities they performed there. However, the large corpus of recent scholarship has for the most part overlooked architecture. This book investigates the spatial and architectural settings of mystery cults and religious assemblies from the eighth century bc to the fourth century ad and shows how architecture can illuminate the contents and societal functions of ancient religions. It examines deities whose cults included mysteries and/or were served by religious associations in the ancient world. Chapters treat the old Greek mystery cults of Demeter in Eleusis and the Great Gods in Samothrace as well as those of Dionysos, and the 'foreign' deities Isis/Serapis, Cybele/Attis, and Mithras. The book also treats religions and cults that did not include mysteries but were served by special religious groups, such as those belonging to the Syrio-Phoenician gods, the Jewish god in the diaspora, and the Christian god. The last section of the book combines the typological results from the first section on architecture with the presentation of the cultic functions of religious groups in the second section. This comparative analysis seeks to understand the social and spatial context for the activities of cults with a main focus on the Hellenistic and Roman periods, in particular through distinguishing the differences and similarities in the use of specific room-types.
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503544373
Category : Architecture and religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The architecture of ancient religious spaces has the potential to offer a deeper understanding of the religious groups who used the spaces and the activities they performed there. However, the large corpus of recent scholarship has for the most part overlooked architecture. This book investigates the spatial and architectural settings of mystery cults and religious assemblies from the eighth century bc to the fourth century ad and shows how architecture can illuminate the contents and societal functions of ancient religions. It examines deities whose cults included mysteries and/or were served by religious associations in the ancient world. Chapters treat the old Greek mystery cults of Demeter in Eleusis and the Great Gods in Samothrace as well as those of Dionysos, and the 'foreign' deities Isis/Serapis, Cybele/Attis, and Mithras. The book also treats religions and cults that did not include mysteries but were served by special religious groups, such as those belonging to the Syrio-Phoenician gods, the Jewish god in the diaspora, and the Christian god. The last section of the book combines the typological results from the first section on architecture with the presentation of the cultic functions of religious groups in the second section. This comparative analysis seeks to understand the social and spatial context for the activities of cults with a main focus on the Hellenistic and Roman periods, in particular through distinguishing the differences and similarities in the use of specific room-types.
Redefining Christian Britain
Author: Jane Garnett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
Addresses the state of religion in the UK from post WWII to the new millennium, with a selection of case studies from experts in the fields of history, sociology and religious studies. This book is organised around the themes of authenticity, generation and virtue. It looks at the impact of Christianity over a range of areas of national life.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
Addresses the state of religion in the UK from post WWII to the new millennium, with a selection of case studies from experts in the fields of history, sociology and religious studies. This book is organised around the themes of authenticity, generation and virtue. It looks at the impact of Christianity over a range of areas of national life.
The First Great Awakening
Author: John Howard Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611477158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
The First Great Awakening, an unprecedented surge in Protestant Christian revivalism in the Eighteenth Century, sparked enormous of controversy at the time and has been a source of scholarly debate ever since. Few historians have sought to write a synthetic history of the First Great Awakening, and in recent decades it has been challenged as having happened at all, being either an exaggeration or an “invention.” The First Great Awakening expands the movement’s geographical, theological, and sociopolitical scope. Rather than focus exclusively on the clerical elites, as earlier studies have done, it deals with them alongside ordinary people, and includes the experiences of women, African Americans, and Indians as the observers and participants they were. It challenges prevailing scholarly opinion concerning what the revivals were and what they meant to the formation of American religious identity and culture. Cover image: NPG 131, George Whitefield by John Wollaston, oil on canvas, circa 1742. © National Portrait Gallery, London
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611477158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357
Book Description
The First Great Awakening, an unprecedented surge in Protestant Christian revivalism in the Eighteenth Century, sparked enormous of controversy at the time and has been a source of scholarly debate ever since. Few historians have sought to write a synthetic history of the First Great Awakening, and in recent decades it has been challenged as having happened at all, being either an exaggeration or an “invention.” The First Great Awakening expands the movement’s geographical, theological, and sociopolitical scope. Rather than focus exclusively on the clerical elites, as earlier studies have done, it deals with them alongside ordinary people, and includes the experiences of women, African Americans, and Indians as the observers and participants they were. It challenges prevailing scholarly opinion concerning what the revivals were and what they meant to the formation of American religious identity and culture. Cover image: NPG 131, George Whitefield by John Wollaston, oil on canvas, circa 1742. © National Portrait Gallery, London