This Book Is Comprised Of Three Philosophical Addresses Made Before The Students Of Cornell University At The End Of The 19th Century. Huxley And Scientific Agnosticism; Philosophical Agnosticism; Spiritual Religion: Its Evolution And Essence.

Contents Nature of Agnosticism Erroneous Views of Agnosticism History of Agnosticism Agnosticism of Hume and Kant Complete or Absolute Agnosticism Mitigated and Partial Agnosticism and Their Forms Partial or Limited Agnosticism as to Ultimate Objects of Knowledge Agnosticism as to God Agnosticism as to Religious Belief Agnosticism as to Knowledge of God

"Sunday School Lessons for Agnostics and Others Who Wonder" is a straightforward and unconventional approach to explaining God, His love, and the teachings of the Bible as they relate to certain Christian doctrines that bother unbelievers.

Author Richard B. Backus puts these issues in a useful context and helpful perspective for those who are troubled about the idea of 'blind obedience," which is encouraged by many religions. He aims to promote the development of individual faith and delves into a number of questions, such as: Is faith important? Is it real? Does it do any good to pray? Who is Jesus, really? Is Holy Communion divine cannibalism? Heaven or Hell: Are there such places? What does God require of me? You will encounter many doubts in your journey of faith, but how you resolve these doubts will define your relationship with God. If you don't know God, your behavior will demonstrate the absence of God in your life. Your faith is there to guide you, but it changes daily-and it must be relevant daily. Only God can save you-and He will, because God loves you unconditionally-and there's nothing you can do about it!

"A superb idea, superbly done"
--Thomas Berry

Reign is a prophetic work, an interpretation of what these tumultuous times, this dawn of a new Age, are really about.

I take my inspiration from the 12th century prophet Joachim de Floris: "There has been a Reign of the Father, we are in the Reign of the Son, there must come a Reign of the Holy Spirit."

My contention is that in all the darkness and disorder of the contemporary world, we are moving into the Reign of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Love, the Feminine principle of the trinity. Love is flowing into the planet right now, surfacing the darkness before it, cleansing our souls, renewing us from the depths of our beings. All are affected by this Awakening, this momentous shift happening on the Earth plane.

My key is Christ. Only now are we ready for the Love that Jesus taught, our true fullness of being, our soul-imagery, our reconciliation with the Earth. Here is a new interpretation of reality, a new enlightenment, spirituality, sexuality, a new understanding of Divinity.

All are called, chosen, have a role to play. God is with us. The Light is in the world and the darkness shall not overcome it.

"The Reign of the Holy Spirit" completes and crowns my metaphysical works. May you find in it perspective and inspiration, rest and renewal. Enjoy.

Volume 6 of 12: Discussions. In presenting to the public these editions of the writings of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, it was the aim to make it as handsome, durable and complete as possible - worthy in every way of the valiant, generous, much-beloved genius who penned these magical pages. Robert Ingersoll's tremendous message, one of the most important messages of all times, thunders through these volumes. The orator himself has passed away, but the words that awoke America from sleep and stupor ring out as liberty bells for all mankind!

The prevailing attitude in today's society is that all living things, our world and the universe was created and is under control of an omnipotent God. Civilizations from simple tribal groups to mighty nation, ancient to modern have worshipped supernatural deities, gods or a God. Do people living in today's sophisticated, industrial societies really believe in a God that was born in ancient times out of ignorance of nature and its workings?

Since there is no proof that God exists, doubts about his existence are always present. Doubts are disclosed in subtle ways to avoid being labeled a non-believer or even worse, an atheist.

For 2000 years, the Christian religion has been a way of life for most of the western world. It has shaped our lives by moral teachings supposedly handed down by God, for which we must be eternally grateful by paying homage to Him for our very lives. Where would the world be today if Christianity had not taken over the European world when the Roman Empire fell? "WHY GOD?" takes on these daunting subjects by examining these beliefs and attitudes.

This book takes a look at mankind's religious needs by exploring the origins of religious beliefs, the evolution of religion, the spread of religious beliefs around the world, and some of the questions of ethics, morality and logic that religion does not, and indeed cannot answer. Mr. Shaw maintains that is not necessary to believe in a Creator in order to derive meaning out of life. Good and bad events will happen whether or not we believe in a God, and the fight against evil can be won without religious beliefs. The author concludes that mankind's religious beliefs have become entirely inappropriate, and that humans have outgrown their need for the supernatural. The survival of the human species depends upon mankind's own inner strengths and resources, and not upon any gods or spirits.

1929. A collection of essays and works selected from the writings of such authors as: Thomas Henry Huxley; Charles Darwin; Sir Oliver Lodge; John Dewey; Samuel Butler; F. Nietzsche; Albert Bigelow Paine; Mark Twain; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Matthew Arnold; Thomas Hardy; George Santayana; Lucian; Omar Khayyam; Plato; William Blake; John Keats; Alfred Edward Housman; Christina Georgina Rossetti; and many more.

Jean Meslier, a Roman Catholic Priest, who, after pastoral service of thirty years wholly abjured religious dogmas left as his last will and testament to be published after his death this book originally entitled Common Sense. The book includes a biography of Meslier by Voltaire.

1) A Previewlite is a Child of God, serving God to the best of his/her ability, given his/her experiences. 2) A Saint is a Child of God, serving God to the best of his/her ability, given his/her ex

The I Ching is the written spiritual language of the Stone Age. Ten thousand years ago the subtle energies of life were widely understood by an enlightened neolithic priesthood, and eventually recorded to pass on to succeeding generations. Stone Age people also had an instinctive understanding of the magnetic currents that run through the earth. They used dowsing and rock art to interpret and pass on this knowledge of metaphysics. The author unifies the ancient earth energies from 3000 B.C. and their connection to the I Ching, connecting the 64 hexagrams to the 64 codons of DNA. Thus he accesses a flash of opened consciousness, past, present and future, as time and space momentarily combine to answer the eternal questions What is God' and Who am I

A refreshingly honest spiritual exploration from the New York Times bestselling author of the Anna Pigeon novels.
Actor, adventuress, seeker of truth, and author of the New York Times bestselling Anna Pigeon mystery series, Nevada Barr beckons readers to share her spiritual search for meaning in life.
Hat by hat, step by step, Barr leads readers down her path to enlightenment by sharing personal episodes, some of them funny and revealing, others painfully honest. Each chapter offers a truth or an answer forged through experience and deep reflection, and a nugget of insight certain to encourage thought and discussion among readers, who may, in turn, find their own spiritual language.

One of the peculiarities of Bulwer was his passion for occult studies. They had a charm for him early in life, and he pursued them with the earnestness which characterized his pursuit of other studies. He became absorbed in wizard lore; he equipped himself with magical implements, -- with rods for transmitting influence, and crystal balls in which to discern coming scenes and persons; and communed with spiritualists and mediums. The fruit of these mystic studies is seen in _Zanoni_ and A strange Story, romances which were a labor of love to the author, and into which he threw all the power he possessed, -- power re-enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation of Oriental thought.

Claiming Sacred Ground
Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona

Adrian J. Ivakhiv

A study of people and politics at two New Age spiritual sites.

In this richly textured account, Adrian Ivakhiv focuses on the activities of pilgrim-migrants to Glastonbury, England and Sedona, Arizona. He discusses their efforts to encounter and experience the spirit or energy of the land and to mark out its significance by investing it with sacred meanings. Their endeavors are presented against a broad canvas of cultural and environmental struggles associated with the incorporation of such geographically marginal places into an expanding global cultural economy.

Ivakhiv sees these contested and "heterotopic" landscapes as the nexus of a complex web of interestes and longings: from millennial anxieties and nostalgic re-imaginings of history and prehistory; to real-estate power grabs; contending religious visions; and the free play of ideas from science, pseudo-science, and popular culture. Looming over all this is the nonhuman life of these landscapes, an"otherness" that alternately reveals and conceals itself behind a pagenant of beliefs, images, and place-myths.

A significant contribution to scholarship on alternative spirituality, sacred space, and the politics of natural landscapes, Claiming Sacred Ground will interest scholars and students of environmental and cultural studies, and the sociology of religious movements and pilgrimage. Non-specialist readers will be stimulated by the cultural, ecological, and spiritual dimensions of extraordinary natural landscapes.

Adrian Ivakhiv teaches in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto, and is President of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada.

April 2001
384 pages, 24 b&w photos, 2 figs., 9 maps, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append.
cloth 0-253-33899-9 $37.40 s / 28.50

Contents

I DEPARTURES
1 Power and Desire in Earth s
Tangled Web
2 Reimagining Earth
3 Orchestrating Sacred Space

II Glastonbury
4 Stage, Props, and Players of Avalon
5 Many Glastonburys: Place-Myths
and Contested Spaces

III SEDONA
6 Red Rocks to Real Estate
7 New Agers, Vortexes, and the
Sacred Landscape

IV ARRIVALS
8 Practices of Place: Nature and
Heterotopia Beyond the New Age"

These 41 chapters explain the dynamics of how the sadhu appeared in the pure mind for Ramakrishna and acted as teacher. Includes: The Cultic Mindset, The Guru Dilemma, Spiritual Solutions to Psychological Equations, and more.

New religious movements - popularly know as 'cults'- arouse strong public opinion and most books on the subject are polemical, giving hostile reaction rather than informed exploration. Exploring New Religions provides an account of a wide variety of new religions, focusing on their origins, beliefs and practices, which are set out in a compelling but dispassionate way, leaving readers to form their own judgements. Chryssides provides important analysis of the 'killer cults' - the Jonestown Peoples Temple, Waco, the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate - and examines the factors that made their followers willing to die for their cause. Older groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) are discussed, and the author traces the development of a variety of strands of spirituality, ranging from New Thought to Transcendentalism and Theosophy. Subsequent chapters include: the Baha'i, The Family (formerly Children of God), the Hare Krishna Movement (ISKCON), The jesus Army, the Rastafarians, the Church of Scientology , Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the Unification Church ('the Moonies').Some less well-known groups are also featured: est (Erhard Seminar Training), the new Kadampa Tradition, Brahma Kumaris, Sai Baba, Subud and the Western Buddhist Order. Also included is a study of the New Age phenomenon, and an account of responses to new religions, at religious, societal and political levels. This is an important new study of new religious movements, which should prove invaluable to scholars,students and clergy as well ak to those whose lives have been affected by new religions. George D. Chryssides is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton. He has had many years of direct acquaintance with new religions, and has written extensively on the subject. His definitive work on the Unification Church, The Advent of Sun Myung Moon, was published in 1991.