Purpose In The Universe

Author : Tim Mulgan
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191066575
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Purpose in the Universe written by Tim Mulgan and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological, teleological, ontological, meta-ethical, and mystical arguments. It then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil, diversity, and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics, arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God, and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that, by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions, a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something, the universe is not about us.

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108489788
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Giving the Devil His Due written by Michael Shermer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-09 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how free speech and open inquiry are integral to science, politics, and society for the survival and progress of our species.

Author : Ralph Lewis, MD
Publisher : Prometheus Books
ISBN 13 : 1633883868
Total Pages : 446 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Finding Purpose in a Godless World written by Ralph Lewis, MD and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A psychiatrist presents a compelling argument for how human purpose and caring emerged in a spontaneous and unguided universe. Can there be purpose without God? This book is about how human purpose and caring, like consciousness and absolutely everything else in existence, could plausibly have emerged and evolved unguided, bottom-up, in a spontaneous universe. A random world--which according to all the scientific evidence and despite our intuitions is the actual world we live in--is too often misconstrued as nihilistic, demotivating, or devoid of morality and meaning. Drawing on years of wide-ranging, intensive clinical experience as a psychiatrist, and his own family experience with cancer, Dr. Lewis helps readers understand how people cope with random adversity without relying on supernatural belief. In fact, as he explains, although coming to terms with randomness is often frightening, it can be liberating and empowering too. Written for those who desire a scientifically sound yet humanistic view of the world, Lewis's book examines science's inroads into the big questions that occupy religion and philosophy. He shows how our sense of purpose and meaning is entangled with mistaken intuitions that events in our lives happen for some intended cosmic reason and that the universe itself has inherent purpose. Dispelling this illusion, and integrating the findings of numerous scientific fields, he shows how not only the universe, life, and consciousness but also purpose, morality, and meaning could, in fact, have emerged and evolved spontaneously and unguided. There is persuasive evidence that these qualities evolved naturally and without mystery, biologically and culturally, in humans as conscious, goal-directed social animals. While acknowledging the social and psychological value of progressive forms of religion, the author respectfully critiques even the most sophisticated theistic arguments for a purposeful universe. Instead, he offers an evidence-based, realistic yet optimistic and empathetic perspective. This book will help people to see the scientific worldview of an unguided, spontaneous universe as awe-inspiring and foundational to building a more compassionate society.

Author : Jane E. Harper
Publisher : Baha'i Publishing Trust
ISBN 13 : 9781931847582
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Universe Within Us written by Jane E. Harper and published by Baha'i Publishing Trust. This book was released on 2009 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative look at the purpose of life through a mixture of religion, science and personal experience

Author : Bernard Haisch
Publisher : Red Wheel/Weiser
ISBN 13 : 1601631227
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Purpose-guided Universe written by Bernard Haisch and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haisch contends that there is a purpose and an underlying intelligence behind the universe, one that is consistent with science, especially the Big Bang and evolution.

Author : Michael Denton
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743237625
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nature's Destiny written by Michael Denton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-02 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading evolutionary thinker, biologist, and medical researcher asks the question: "Could life elsewhere be substantially different from life on Earth?"--and builds a step-by-step argument for human inevitability. 65 illustrations and photos.

Author : Todd May
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022623570X
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Significant Life written by Todd May and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A tour de force. It is a thoughtful, subtle, beautifully written discussion of what it takes to live a meaningful life.” —Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice Throughout history most of us have looked to faith, relationships, or deeds to give our lives purpose. But in A Significant Life, philosopher Todd May offers an exhilarating new way of thinking about meaning, one deeply attuned to life as it actually is: a work in progress, a journey—and often a narrative. Offering moving accounts of his own life alongside rich engagements with philosophers from Aristotle to Heidegger, he shows us where to find the significance of our lives: in the way we live them. May starts by looking at the fundamental fact that life unfolds over time, and as it does so, it begins to develop certain qualities, certain themes. Our lives can be marked by intensity, curiosity, perseverance, or many other qualities that become guiding narrative values. These values lend meanings to our lives that are distinct from—but also interact with—the universal values we are taught to cultivate, such as goodness or happiness. Offering a fascinating examination of a broad range of figures—from music icon Jimi Hendrix to civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, from cyclist Lance Armstrong to The Portrait of a Lady’s Ralph Touchett to Claus von Stauffenberg, a German officer who tried to assassinate Hitler—May shows that narrative values offer a rich variety of criteria by which to assess a life, specific to each of us and yet widely available. They offer us a way of reading ourselves, who we are, and who we might like to be.

Author : Sean Carroll
Publisher : Dutton
ISBN 13 : 0142180300
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Particle at the End of the Universe written by Sean Carroll and published by Dutton. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Higgs boson ... is the key to understanding why mass exists and how atoms are possible. After billions of dollars and decades of effort by more than six thousand researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland--a doorway is opening into the mind-boggling world of dark matter and beyond. Caltech physicist and acclaimed writer Sean Carroll explains both the importance of the Higgs boson and the ultimately human story behind the greatest scientific achievement of our time"--Publisher

Author : Robert Flash Kingsley
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 90 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Human's Universe and Its Purpose and Destiny written by Robert Flash Kingsley and published by . This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of God and our origin as humans has been at odds between science and religion for centuries until just recently. Now, due to the latest findings and the merging of both fields of study, a greater view of the concept of the Creator that applies to all people equally representing both disciplines is available to benefit our entire global society. The universal comprehension of the human spirit as an extension of the creative energy of the universe now arrives for us to utilize the unseen forces of life and creation to rebuild ourselves and the world for future development and prosperity. Unification through intelligent awareness is the only way we, as a civilization, can have a bright future.

Author : Jim Holt
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0871404095
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why Does the World Exist written by Jim Holt and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-07-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.