BELIEVE. One of the most interesting results to come out of this study was that the intellectually based reasons for belief ... As patternseeking animals, we seek causes to which we can attribute our actions and the actions of others.

Author: Michael Shermer

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks

ISBN: 1429996749

Category: Science

Page: 368

View: 593

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A new edition covering the latest scientific research on how the brain makes us believers or skeptics Recent polls report that 96 percent of Americans believe in God, and 73 percent believe that angels regularly visit Earth. Why is this? Why, despite the rise of science, technology, and secular education, are people turning to religion in greater numbers than ever before? Why do people believe in God at all? These provocative questions lie at the heart of How We Believe , an illuminating study of God, faith, and religion. Bestselling author Michael Shermer offers fresh and often startling insights into age-old questions, including how and why humans put their faith in a higher power, even in the face of scientific skepticism. Shermer has updated the book to explore the latest research and theories of psychiatrists, neuroscientists, epidemiologists, and philosophers, as well as the role of faith in our increasingly diverse modern world. Whether believers or nonbelievers, we are all driven by the need to understand the universe and our place in it. How We Believe is a brilliant scientific tour of this ancient and mysterious desire.

In the preface I defined “belief” as the capacity to draw on our range of cognitive and social resources and to combine them with our imagination. Believing is thinking beyond the here and now and investing to the extent that such ...

Author: Agustin Fuentes

Publisher: Yale University Press

ISBN: 9780300249255

Category: Science

Page: 281

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A wide-ranging argument by a renowned anthropologist that the capacity to believe is what makes us human Why are so many humans religious? Why do we daydream, imagine, and hope? Philosophers, theologians, social scientists, and historians have offered explanations for centuries, but their accounts often ignore or even avoid human evolution. Evolutionary scientists answer with proposals for why ritual, religion, and faith make sense as adaptations to past challenges or as by-products of our hyper-complex cognitive capacities. But what if the focus on religion is too narrow? Renowned anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that the capacity to be religious is actually a small part of a larger and deeper human capacity to believe. Why believe in religion, economies, love? A fascinating intervention into some of the most common misconceptions about human nature, this book employs evolutionary, neurobiological, and anthropological evidence to argue that belief—the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea—is central to the human way of being in the world.

Passion is usually a good measure of what it is that we really believe in, and of what truly concerns us. Elsewhere in this series I have written about the form of belief and its relationship to experience, practice and, especially, ...

Author: Jeff Astley

Publisher: SCM Press

ISBN: 9780334054078

Category: Religion

Page: 152

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This book provides a general introduction to the basic beliefs of Christian theology togther with their significance for Christian living and worship

These new ideas, in turn, can alter the neural circuitry that governs how we behave and what we believe. Our beliefs may be static, but they aren't necessarily static. They can change; we can change them. Nowhere is this more apparent ...

Author: Andrew Newberg

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

ISBN: 9780743293723

Category: Science

Page: 337

View: 388

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WHY DO YOU BELIEVE THE THINGS YOU BELIEVE? Do you remember events differently from how they really happened? Where do your superstitions come from? How do morals evolve? Why are some people religious and others nonreligious? Everyone has thoughts and questions like these, and now Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman expose, for the first time, how our complex views emerge from the neural activities of the brain. Bridging science, psychology, and religion, they demonstrate, in simple terminology, how the brain perceives reality and transforms it into an extraordinary range of personal, ethical, and creative premises that we use to build meaning, value, spirituality, and truth into our lives. When you come to understand this remarkable process, it will change forever the way you look at the world and yourself. Supported by groundbreaking research, including brain scans of people as they pray, meditate, and even speak in tongues, Newberg and Waldman propose a new model for how deep convictions emerge and influence our lives. You will even glimpse how the mind of an atheist works when contemplating God.Using personal stories, moral paradoxes, and optical illusions, the authors demonstrate how our brains construct our fondest assumptions about reality, offering recommendations for exercising your most important muscle in order to develop a more life-affirming, flexible range of attitudes. You'll discover how to: Recognize when your beliefs are altered by others Guard against mental traps and prejudicial thinking Distinguish between destructive and constructive beliefs Cultivate spiritual and ethical ideals Ultimately, we must always return to our beliefs. From the ordinary to the extraordinary, they give meaning to the mysteries of life, providing us with our individual uniqueness and the ability to fill our lives with joy. Most important, though, they give us inspiration and hope, beacons to guide us through the light and dark corners of the soul

Rather, we must say that God is not known by his nature (because he is by nature unknowable and transcends all reason and thought). We know him from the order of all things, both because it was laid out by him and because it contains ...

Author: Gerald L. Bray

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

ISBN: 9780830825318

Category: Religion

Page: 403

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This volume offers partristic commentary edited by Gerald L. Bray on the first article of the Nicene Creed. Readers will gain insight into the history and substance of what the early church believed about God the Father.

Spurred by his study of suicide terrorism, psychiatrist Andy Thomson and Clare Aukofer elegantly describe many innate capacities of the human brain to explain how we can believe in an unknowable phenomenon: god. The writing is clear, ...

Author: J. Anderson Thomson

Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)

ISBN: 9780984493234

Category: Religion

Page: 144

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In this groundbreaking volume, J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., MD, with Clare Aukofer, offers a succinct yet comprehensive study of how and why the human mind generates religious belief. Dr. Thomson, a highly respected practicing psychiatrist with credentials in forensic psychiatry and evolutionary psychology, methodically investigates the components and causes of religious belief in the same way any scientist would investigate the movement of astronomical bodies or the evolution of life over time—that is, as a purely natural phenomenon. Providing compelling evidence from psychology, the cognitive neurosciences, and related fields, he, with Ms. Aukofer, presents an easily accessible and exceptionally convincing case that god(s) were created by man—not vice versa. With this slim volume, Dr. Thomson establishes himself as a must-read thinker and leading voice on the primacy of reason and science over superstition and religion.

we wasted our time. Had Wile E. Coyote thought that way, there would have only been one episode of The Road Runner Show, and not the almost fifty that were produced. If effort is the key factor on which we need to focus— not the ...

Author: Dr. Chris Thurman

Publisher: HarperChristian Resources

ISBN: 9780310112136

Category: Religion

Page: 241

View: 324

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A guide to stopping the lies and renewing your mind. Psychologist Dr. Chris Thurman tells us the unvarnished truth about the most common lies we tell ourselves, how they damage our emotional and spiritual health, and what we can do to overcome them in this 25-lesson workbook based on the classic bestseller, The Lies We Believe. The Lies We Believe Workbook is designed to help us recognize our faulty beliefs, internalize the truth that can set us free, and grow into more mature and passionate followers of Christ. As we work diligently on developing a more biblically accurate view of reality, we are transformed in the process. To put it differently, when we learn to think more like Christ we can be more like Christ. On your own or with some friends, take the challenge to work out your mental salvation by pulling down toxic mental strongholds, building truthful strongholds in their place, and being transformed by the renewing of your mind. When we do this, we can experience the abundant life God intended for us to live. Each lesson includes: A self-assessment questionnaire to rate your faulty beliefs Study of the biblical truth that leads to freedom Key memory and meditation verses for renewing your mind Prayer for contemplation and reflection

/758/ How should we understand the statement “Accept the authority of every human institution”? ... When, therefore, the people believe their pastor—if it is a matter of faith, in any case—they believe him because his belief is in ...

Author: Marijn de Kroon

Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press

ISBN: 9780664232931

Category: Religion

Page: 126

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This English translation from the Dutch volume is a study of a quotation by St. Augustine as it was understood in the late medieval period. Marijn de Kroon focuses on how this quotation was interpreted by two theologians: Wessel Gansfort, the Northern humanist and theologian connected to theDevotio modernaand the Brethren of the Common Life, and Martin Bucer, the Protestant reformer who further developed Gansfort's ideas. This study is accompanied by a series of shorter texts, all showing the reception of Augustine's phrase in late medieval theology and contrasting it with Gansfort's understanding of it, which Bucer was to adopt. With his commented edition of sourcetexts, de Kroon throws a new light on the links between late medieval and Reformation thought, demonstrating how a fully fledged reformer like Bucer used the works of medieval theologians. In fact, this is the first work to point to a concrete case of Gansfort's influence on the Reformation.

A CELIBATE is someone who has renounced all thought of marrying . We see this as a lifetime decision sealed with a sol- emn vow . Jesus was celibate for the Lord's sake . He taught that celibacy is a gift which we should seek before ...

Author:

Publisher: Multiply Publications

ISBN: 1900878100

Category: Christian life

Page: 52

View: 243

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An introduction to the faith and practice of the Jesus Fellowship. This booklet is based on a series of studies produced for discussion at the weekly Jesus Fellowship “agape” meals. It covers the biblical basis of the abbreviated version of the ‘Statement of faith and practice’ of the Jesus Fellowship Church. Questions printed at the side of each study have been included to provoke discussion and thoughtful meditation.

I thought that what I was feeling was expected and normal. I understood the diagnosis more when I came back for the spring semester. I was a mess. I still had the same anxiety and trigger response when I saw him.

Author: Annie E. Clark

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks

ISBN: 9781627795340

Category: Social Science

Page: 272

View: 179

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"Me too. It happened to me too." More than one in five women and 5 percent of men are sexually assaulted while at college. Some survivors are coming forward; others are not. In We Believe You, students from every kind of college and university—large and small, public and private, highly selective and less so—share experiences of trauma, healing, and everyday activism, representing a diversity of races, economic and family backgrounds, gender identities, immigration statuses, interests, capacities, and loves. Theirs is a bold, irrefutable sampling of voices and stories that should speak to all.