Religion Language Narrative And The Search For Meaning

Author : Anthony Campbell
Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 1409284484
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion, Language, Narrative and the Search for Meaning written by Anthony Campbell and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009-08-09 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about religion from a secular standpoint which nevertheless takes its subject seriously. Anthony Campbell is a medical doctor who has long been interested in religion and spirituality and has written several books about it in the last 30-odd years, including the first detailed examination of the philosophical ideas underlying Transcendental Meditation (Seven States of Consciousness, published in 1973). He has also made a study of the Persian heretical Islamic sect known in the West as the Assassins (The Assassins of Alamut, available from Lulu). In 2008 he published a personal account, in Totality Beliefs and the Religious Imagination, also available from Lulu, of his own gradual abandonment of the search for religiouatruth. The present book looks at a number of attempts to explain the existence of religious belief and concludes that religion will probablyalways appear naturally in human consciousness because of the way in which our minds have evolved.

Author : Viktor E Frankl
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1448177685
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Man's Search For Meaning written by Viktor E Frankl and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-12-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 16 million copies sold worldwide 'Every human being should read this book' Simon Sinek One of the outstanding classics to emerge from the Holocaust, Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's story of his struggle for survival in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Today, this remarkable tribute to hope offers us an avenue to finding greater meaning and purpose in our own lives.

Author : David Birnbaum
Publisher : New Paradigm Matrix
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 586 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Search for Meaning written by David Birnbaum and published by New Paradigm Matrix. This book was released on with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Deuteronomy depicts Moses addressing Israel before hisown death as he imagines that some day in the future children willask their parents to explain the meaning of the “testimonies, statutes,and judgments” (Deuteronomy 6:20) that are the foundation of thecovenant that binds Israel to its God. He thus frames in specificallyJewish terms the same set of haunting intimations that all thoughtfulpeople bring to the contemplation of their own lives—and, indeed,to life itself: the sense that being alive can or should mean morethan merely not being dead; that the contemplation of even the mostbanal features of daily life can yield rich insight about the nature ofexistence; and the feeling that life itself can be understood as a kindof scrim that might allow us to see through it to the secrets andmysteries that lie beyond.That set of hopeful suppositions inspires moderns just as stronglyand enticingly as it did the ancients. Yet, the specific question of whatit actually means for this or that part of life to mean anything at allother than what it overtly is (or, at least, appears to be) does not seemto have exerted anywhere near as siren a call on our ancient forebearsas it does on us moderns. Still, as we seek meaning in the world andin our lives, it behooves us to ponder the meaning of meaning as well.These twin notions—that life has meaning beyond what the2 Martin S. Cohencasual observer can see easily, and that the effort to uncover anddecipher that meaning can be profound enough to be spirituallytransformational—have animated the contributors to this volume, astheir work demonstrates just how meaningful the search for meaningcan be. Some have approached this from a spiritual point of view,grounding themselves in traditional biblical, talmudic, or mysticalsources. Others have framed their efforts in political terms or in deeplypersonal ones. And still others have attempted to consider the issuethrough the lens of modern philosophical inquiry. But regardless ofthe specific perspective of any individual author, all have in commonthe deep-seated conviction that life bears meaning…and that thatmeaning can best be discovered not by spending a lifetime hoping formomentary satori but rather by standing on the shoulders of fellowtravelers from earlier eras, and from that slightly elevated vantagepoint seeing just a bit further than they could or did. For almost allof our authors, then, the search for meaning is best understood as anon-going, intergenerational effort that links the seekers of all agesto each other through the contemplation of earlier efforts to mineprofundity and significance from the quarry of human life itself. It is,at best, a slow march forward!As readers will see from the Table of Contents, the ancient Bookof Kohelet has served several of our authors as the framework for theirinterpretive work. (Kohelet is the Hebrew name of the biblical bookalso known as Ecclesiastes, which name is derived from the Greektranslation of the work.) Others have chosen to grapple with thequestion Moses imagined future Jewish children eventually puttingto their parents as they wondered what the commandments actually“mean” in terms of the larger picture of Israelite culture and Jewishlife in our own day. Still others have addressed the search for meaningin life today by taking into account the question of human suffering,considering the issue both generally as a philosophical challenge and3 Prefacemore specifically with reference to the Shoah.Taken all together, the contributors to this volume have put forththe notion that life is ennobled, not trivialized, by the contemplativeeffort to seek meaning in the ebb and flow of life’s experiences…andparticularly in those life-experiences related to the service of God.And yet, for all they are united in that conviction, our authors in thisvolume of the Mesorah Matrix series are nonetheless a diverse group:older and younger women and men, North Americans and Israelisliving at home and abroad, seasoned scholars and newly-mintedrabbis and teachers. They are teachers and researchers trained indifferent schools of thought and affiliated with different movementsand institutions within the mosaic of Jewish life that characterizesthe House of Israel as it enters, by its own reckoning, the final quarterof the fifty-eighth century. They are a varied lot, our authors. But inmany ways, they are are, all of them, cut from the same cloth.Our authors work with the original sources and generally presentthem in their own translations. Citations of “NJPS” refer to thecomplete translation of Scripture first published under the titleTanakh: The Holy Scriptures by the Jewish Publication Society inPhiladelphia in 1985. In this volume, as in all books in the MesorahMatrix series, the four-letter name of God is generally representedby “the Eternal” or “Eternal God.” Authors who are specificallydiscussing the actual four-letter name, on the other hand, mayoccasionally depart from this usage in order to more clearly makethe point of their argument. .I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the othersenior editors of the Mesorah Matrix series: David Birnbaum andRabbi Benjamin Blech, as well as Rabbi Saul J. Berman, our associateeditor. They and our able staff have all supported me as I’ve laboredto bring this volume to fruition and I am grateful to them all.As always, I must also express my gratitude to the men and4 Martin S. Cohenwomen, and particularly to the lay leadership, of the synagogueI serve as rabbi: the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, NewYork. Possessed of the unwavering conviction that their rabbi’s bookprojects are part and parcel of his service to them—and, throughthem, to the larger community of those interested in learning aboutJudaism through the medium of the well-written word—they areremarkably supportive of my literary efforts as author and editor. Iam in their debt, and I am therefore very pleased to acknowledgethat debt formally here and wherever I publish my own work or thework of others.

Author : Mary L. Warner
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
ISBN 13 : 9780810854307
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Adolescents in the Search for Meaning written by Mary L. Warner and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As is painfully evident from the reports of school shootings, gang violence, dysfunctional family life, and from statistics on adolescent suicide, many teens live troubled lives. Even those who live a normal life still face the challenges adults face, but teens are also engaged in establishing independence and finding their identity. However, few adolescents have the same resources as adults for surviving life challenges. Building from the idea that story is a powerful source of meaning, particularly those stories that resonate with our own lives, this book suggests that the stories of other young adults offer a resource yet to be fully tapped. Adolescents in the Search for Meaning begins from the perspective of young adults by sharing the results of a survey of over 1400 teens and also includes the insights of authors of Young Adult Literature. The book presents over 120 novels that teens have identified as meaningful as well as books recommended by YA authors and experts in the field of YA literature. For any teacher, librarian, parent or counselor wanting to reach young adults, this book is ideal.

Author : Stanley E. Porter
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 1850757836
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Nature of Religious Language written by Stanley E. Porter and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume were presented at a conference held at the Roehampton Institute, London, in February 1995, and are concerned with either theological or literary issues related to the nature of religious language. The papers suggest further issues that are still unresolved about the nature of religious language, from its early usage in the biblical texts to its recent use in contemporary writing and religious discourse.

Author : Meghan O'Gieblyn
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0525562710
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book God, Human, Animal, Machine written by Meghan O'Gieblyn and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future." —Phillip Lopate “[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.

Author : Julian Young
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135020906
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Death of God and the Meaning of Life written by Julian Young and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-16 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the meaning of life? In today's secular, post-religious scientific world, this question has become a serious preoccupation. But it also has a long history: many major philosophers have thought deeply about it, as Julian Young so vividly illustrates in this thought-provoking second edition of The Death of God and the Meaning of Life. Three new chapters explore Søren Kierkegaard’s attempts to preserve a Christian answer to the question of the meaning of life, Karl Marx's attempt to translate this answer into naturalistic and atheistic terms, and Sigmund Freud’s deep pessimism about the possibility of any version of such an answer. Part 1 presents an historical overview of philosophers from Plato to Marx who have believed in a meaning of life, either in some supposed ‘other’ world or in the future of this world. Part 2 assesses what happened when the traditional structures that give life meaning began to erode. With nothing to take their place, these structures gave way to the threat of nihilism, to the appearance that life is meaningless. Young looks at the responses to this threat in chapters on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Foucault and Derrida. Fully revised and updated throughout, this highly engaging exploration of fundamental issues will captivate anyone who’s ever asked themselves where life’s meaning (if there is one) really lies. It also makes a perfect historical introduction to philosophy, particularly to the continental tradition.

Author : Paul Ricœur
Publisher : Fortress Press
ISBN 13 : 9781451415704
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Figuring the Sacred written by Paul Ricœur and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thought of Paul Ricoeur continues its profound effect on theology, religious studies and biblical interpretation. The 28 papers contained in this volume constitute the most comprehensive overview of Ricoeur's writings in religion since 1970. Ricoeur's hermeneutical orientation and his sensitivity to the mystery of religious language offer fresh insight to the transformative potential of sacred literature, including the Bible.

Author : Dirk Johannsen
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 900442167X
Total Pages : 391 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion written by Dirk Johannsen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion studies narrativity as situated modes of engaging with reality in religious contexts across the globe, equally shaped by the immersive character of the stories told and the sensory qualities of their performances.

Author : Corinna Nicolaou
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231541252
Total Pages : 443 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A None's Story written by Corinna Nicolaou and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rising population known as "nones" for its members' lack of religious affiliation is changing American society, politics, and culture. Many nones believe in God and even visit places of worship, but they do not identify with a specific faith or belong to a spiritual community. Corinna Nicolaou is a none, and in this layered narrative, she describes what it is like for her and thousands of others to live without religion or to be spiritual without committing to a specific faith. Nicolaou tours America's major traditional religions to see what, if anything, one might lack without God. She moves through Christianity's denominations, learning their tenets and worshiping alongside their followers. She travels to Los Angeles to immerse herself in Judaism, Berkeley to educate herself about Buddhism, and Dallas and Washington, D.C., to familiarize herself with Islam. She explores what light they can shed on the fears and failings of her past, and these encounters prove the significant role religion still plays in modern life. They also exemplify the vibrant relationship between religion and American culture and the enduring value it provides to immigrants and outsiders. Though she remains a devout none, Nicolaou's experiences reveal points of contact between the religious and the unaffiliated, suggesting that nones may be radically revising the practice of faith in contemporary times.