We are haunted, Samuel Kimbriel suggests, by a habit of isolation buried, often imperceptibly, within our practices of understanding and relating to the world. In this volume he works through the complexities of this disposition to contest its place within contemporary philosophical thought and practice. He focuses on the human activity of friendship. Chapters one and two examine friendship to unearth the contours of this habit towards isolation and to reveal certain ills that have long attended it. Chapters three through seven place these isolated ways of relating to the world into critical dialogue with the tradition of late-antique and early-medieval Johannine Christianity, in which intimacy and understanding go hand in hand. This tradition drew the human activities of friendship and enquiry into such unity that understanding itself became a kind of communion. Kimbriel endorses a return to an antique and particularly Christian philosophical habit-"the befriending of wisdom."

What is religion? Where does it come from? Which religion best fits our needs? Mankind has always been curious to discover what's beyond the visible. From the moment that confusion surrounded the existence and the true identity of God, new sciences developed, and many philosophers fell into question. Many more questions have followed ever since.In Beyond the Visible: Uniting Science and Religion, author Issa Gammoh ponders some of these age-old questions, considering whether there is a universally true answer. In the twenty-first century, with humanity's advanced knowledge and ways of thinking, science is getting closer to resolving many of the questions that have been confounding humanity for centuries. The discovery of the Higgs field, the derivation of the famous equation E=mc2, a better psychological understanding of ourselves, and our developing knowledge about neurology--all of these and much more provide us with guidance. One way of thinking can link all of these concepts together to reach scientific answers about many unknowns that humanity has pursued for many generations.Beyond the Visible travels a path of discovery to find the link between many unknown phenomena and theories. This journey seeks to erase your confusion with what will be the scientific evidences of invisible randomness. Expand your consciousness and understanding about life and the world in which you are living.

Charting a genealogy of the modern idea of the self, Felix O Murchadha explores the accounts of self-identity expounded by key Early Modern philosophers, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, Hume and Kant. The question of the self as we would discuss it today only came to the forefront of philosophical concern with Modernity, beginning with an appeal to the inherited models of the self found in Stoicism, Scepticism, Augustinianism and Pelagianism, before continuing to develop as a subject of philosophical debate. Exploring this trajectory, The Formation of the Modern Self pursues a number of themes central to the Early Modern development of selfhood, including, amongst others, grace and passion. It examines on the one hand the deep-rooted dependence on the divine and the longing for happiness and salvation and, on the other hand, the distancing from the Stoic ideal of apatheia, as philosophers from Descartes to Spinoza recognised the passions as essential to human agency. Fundamental to the new question of the self was the relation of faith and reason. Uncovering commonalities and differences amongst Early Modern philosophers, O Murchadha traces how the voluntarism of Modernity led to the sceptical approach to the self in Montaigne and Hume and how this sceptical strand, in turn, culminated in Kant's rational faith. More than a history of the self in philosophy, The Formation of the Modern Self inspires a fresh look at self-identity, uncovering not only how our modern idea of selfhood developed but just how embedded the concept of self is in external considerations: from ethics, to reason, to religion.

There is good reason why some people don't want to talk about religion in polite company. Like conversations about politics, discussions about religion all too often set people at odds with each other in ways that are hard to predict and difficult to control. For all the controversy involved with such debate, this book invites the reader to engage with an ethical appraisal of religion(s) as they are practised today. It is written in the belief that this is an important dialogue for our time. It claims, despite the emotive character of the subject, that the free exchange of ideas and experience between people of differing views and commitments can with practice generate more light than heat. Particular effort is made to answer the question: how can we fairly evaluate the ethical character of religion(s)? It focuses especially but not at all exclusively on the religions of Christianity and Islam, being critical of them in many respects; but it also offers sharp rebuke to some of the perspectives of Richard Dawkins and others among the new atheists.

The story of Jesus is well-known worldwide. But have you ever wondered if it is the true and complete story of the Savior? Could there be more to the Son of God?Author Audrey Carr addresses those questions in The Greatest Story Never Told: An Advanced Understanding of Christianity. She not only presents the real story of Jesus, in which he did not die on the cross, but also includes his unitary gospel of "oneness with God" that traditional Christianity has missed. Quoting from highly documented, scholarly works, this story of Jesus incorporates Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. With details and maps of his many years in India, Carr provides a photograph of his real tomb in Kashmir. Carr also offers information about meditation techniques he practiced, for Jesus was not a Christian but a Hindu-Buddha "The Kingdom of Heaven" was his term for Enlightened Consciousness.Unlike other scholarly books, The Greatest Story Never Told is intended for the everyday person. Readers will come away with a new, meaningful, life-changing understanding of Jesus and his teachings. Carr seeks to destroy what is false and resuscitate the real truth, beyond all myths, and she reveals the connections between major religions. Spiritually uplifting and challenging, The Greatest Story Never Told is for anyone who is ready for an advanced understanding of Jesus and all the other God-men of the ages who have realized their divine identity.

Designed as a textbook for use in courses on natural theology and used by Immanuel Kant as the basis for his Lectures on The Philosophical Doctrine of Religion, Johan August Eberhard's Preparation for Natural Theology (1781) is now available in English for the first time. With a strong focus on the various intellectual debates and historically significant texts in late renaissance and early modern theology, Preparation for Natural Theology influenced the way Kant thought about practical cognition as well as moral and religious concepts. Access to Eberhard's complete text makes it possible to distinguish where in the lectures Kant is making changes to what Eberhard has written and where he is articulating his own ideas. Identifying new unexplored lines of research, this translation provides a deeper understanding of Kant's explicitly religious doctrines and his central moral writings, such as the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. Accompanied by Kant's previously untranslated handwritten notes on Eberhard's text as well as the Danzig transcripts of Kant's course on rational theology, Preparation for Natural Theology features a dual English-German / German-English glossary, a concordance and an introduction situating the book in relation to 18th-century theology and philosophy. This is a significant contribution to twenty-first century Kantian studies.

Experimental philosophy has blossomed into a variety of philosophical fields including ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of language. But there has been very little experimental philosophical research in the domain of philosophy of religion. Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy demonstrates how cognitive science of religion has the methodological and conceptual resources to become a form of experimental philosophy of religion. Addressing a wide variety of empirical claims that are of interest to philosophers and psychologists of religion, a team of psychologists and philosophers apply data from the psychology of religion to important problems in the philosophy of religion including the psychology of religious diversity; the psychology of substance dualism; the problem of evil and the relation between religious belief and empathy; and the cognitive science explaining the formation of intuitions that unwittingly guide philosophers of religion when formulating arguments. Bringing together authors and researchers who have made important contributions to interdisciplinary research on religion in the last decade, Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy provides new ways of approaching core philosophical and psychological problems.

"It is a grandiose claim to have banished God. With such a lot at stake we surely need to ask Hawking to produce evidence to establish his claim. Do his arguments really stand up to close scrutiny? I think we have a right to know." The Grand Design and Brief Answers to Big Questions by eminent scientist the late Stephen Hawking were blockbusting contributions to the science religion debate. They claimed it was the laws of physics themselves which brought the universe into being, rather than any God. In this forthright response, John Lennox, Oxford University mathematician and internationally-known apologist, takes a closer look at Hawking's logic and questions his conclusions. In lively, layman's terms, Lennox guides us through the key points in Hawking's arguments - with clear explanations of the latest scientific and philosophical methods and theories - and demonstrates that far from disproving a Creator God, they make his existence seem all the more probable.