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In today’s modern world, we are largely isolated from the kind of
savagery our ancestors faced on a daily basis. Although violence
was as natural to our evolutionary development as sex and food, it
has become foreign to most of us: at once demonized and glamorized,
but almost always deeply misunderstood. Our hard-earned and
hard-wired instincts—our evolved and trained ability to survive
and overcome violent encounters—have been compromised. The Gift
of Violence tells the story of this vulnerability and provides the
average person with all the knowledge they need to reduce the
likelihood of becoming a victim of violence—and to survive a
violent encounter. Based both on the author’s decades of
experience teaching everyday people how to defend themselves and on
a rational approach to the scientific data, The Gift of Violence
offers clear, easy-to-remember lessons for people of all ages and
abilities. It is designed to empower those who've been affected by
violence, or are concerned that they or their loved ones could
be—in short, to help good people become more dangerous to bad
people.
In our current political climate, it seems impossible to have a
civil conversation with someone who has a different opinion.
Dialogue is shut down when perspectives clash. Heated debates on
Facebook and Twitter often lead to shaming, hindering any
possibility of productive discourse. How to Have Impossible
Conversations guides readers through the process of having
effective, civil discussions about any divisive issues--not just
religious faith but climate change, race, gender, poverty,
immigration, and gun control. Coauthors Peter Boghossian and James
Lindsay distinguish between two types of conversations: those that
are oriented toward arriving at truth, and those that may require
changing the beliefs of people who do not want their beliefs
changed (interventions). They then guide readers through the
straightforward, practical, conversational techniques necessary for
every successful conversation, up to expert- and master-level
techniques to deal with hardliners and extremists. With key
principles like the "Seven Fundamentals Necessary for Good
Conversations," this book is the manual everyone needs to foster
connection and empathy with anyone.
A call to action to address people’s psychological and social
motives for a belief in God, rather than debate the existence of
God With every argument for theism long since discredited,
the result is that atheism has become little more than the noises
reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious
beliefs. Thus, engaging in interminable debate with religious
believers about the existence of God has become exactly the wrong
way for nonbelievers to try to deal with misguided—and often
dangerous—belief in a higher power. The key, author James Lindsay
argues, is to stop that particular conversation. He demonstrates
that whenever people say they believe in “God,” they are really
telling us that they have certain psychological and social needs
that they do not know how to meet. Lindsay then provides more
productive avenues of discussion and action. Once nonbelievers
understand this simple point, and drop the very label of atheist,
will they be able to change the way we all think about, talk about,
and act upon the troublesome notion called “God.”
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