Keiji Nishitani notes the irreversible trend of Western civilization to nihilism, and singles out the conquest of nihilism as the task for contemporary philosophy. Nihility, or relative nothingness, can only be overcome by being radicalized to Emptiness, or absolute nothingness. Taking absolute nothingness as the fundamental notion in rational explanations of the Eastern experience of human life, Professor Nishitani examines the relevance of this notion for contemporary life, and in particular for Western philosophical theories and religious believes. Everywhere his basic intention remains the same: to direct our modern predicament to a resolution through this insight.The challenge that the thought of Keiji Nishitani presents to the West, as a modern version of an Eastern speculative tradition that is every bit as old and as variegated as our own, is one that brings into unity the principle of reality and the principle of salvation. In the process, one traditional Western idea after another comes under scrutiny: the dichotomy of faith and reason, of being and substance, the personal and transcendent notions of God, the exaggerated role given to the knowing ego, and even the Judeo-Christian view of history itself.Religion and Nothingness represents the major work of one of Japan's most powerful and committed philosophical minds.

     Thompson draws upon sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy to argue that mind and life are more continuous than has previously been accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind. Where there is life, Thompson argues, there is mind: life and mind share common principles of self-organization, and the self-organizing features of mind are an enriched version of the self-organizing features of life. Rather than trying to close the explanatory gap, Thompson marshals philosophical and scientific analyses to bring unprecedented insight to the nature of life and consciousness. This synthesis of phenomenology and biology helps make Mind in Life a vital and long-awaited addition to his landmark volume The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (coauthored with Eleanor Rosch and Francisco Varela). Endlessly interesting and accessible, Mind in Life is a groundbreaking addition to the fields of the theory of the mind, life science, and phenomenology.

    The authors argue that only by having a sense of common ground between mind in Science and mind in experience can our understanding of cognition be more complete. Toward that end, they develop a dialogue between cognitive science and Buddhist meditative psychology and situate it in relation to other traditions such as phenomenology and psychoanalysis.

    This concise guide is filled with illustrations, sidebars, and memorizable steps to help Christians stand their ground and defend their faith with reason and precision. In his engaging style, Dr. Craig offers four arguments for God’s existence, defends the historicity of Jesus’ personal claims and resurrection, addresses the problem of suffering, and shows why religious relativism doesn’t work. Along the way, he shares his story of following God’s call in his own life. This one-stop, how-to-defend-your-faith manual will equip Christians to advance faith conversations deliberately, applying straightforward, cool-headed arguments. They will discover not just what they believe, but why they believe—and how being on guard with the truth has the power to change lives forever.

    Surprisingly, though, the Bible does not have one answer but many "answers" that often contradict one another. Consider these competing explanations for suffering put forth by various biblical writers:The prophets: suffering is a punishment for sinThe book of Job, which offers two different answers: suffering is a test, and you will be rewarded later for passing it; and suffering is beyond comprehension, since we are just human beings and God, after all, is GodEcclesiastes: suffering is the nature of things, so just accept itAll apocalyptic texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: God will eventually make right all that is wrong with the worldFor renowned Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, the question of why there is so much suffering in the world is more than a haunting thought. Ehrman's inability to reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of real life led the former pastor of the Princeton Baptist Church to reject Christianity.In God's Problem, Ehrman discusses his personal anguish upon discovering the Bible's contradictory explanations for suffering and invites all people of faith—or no faith—to confront their deepest questions about how God engages the world and each of us.

    Not in our school system, not in our synagogues, and not in our media. Nor do we have easy access to the New Testament. Jesus has been studiously avoided, and hidden from our people. Today in Israel, 99.7% of the Jewish population, reject Jesus as the Messiah. How did our country, where the gospel first took place, come to be so adamantly against it? Within Judaism over the last two millennia, any kind of spiritual message had to go through the “gate keepers”, the Orthodox Jewish Rabbis. The Rabbinic Judaism of the Orthodox comes directly from the sect of the “Pharisees”, whom Jesus rebuked: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.” (Matthew 23:13) Ever since the days of Messiah, the Rabbis have set themselves in opposition to the gospel, blocking the message of Jesus from Israel. They deliberately prevent Jewish people from hearing about the free salvation offered to them in the death and resurrection of their own Jewish Messiah. They have gone to great lengths to conceal Jesus, and keep him the best kept secret in Judaism., keeping our people in spiritual darkness. But now the secret is out! After almost 2000 years, Jesus, or as we call him in Hebrew, Yeshua, can no longer be hidden from the people! Today, our ministry, ONE FOR ISRAEL, reaches Jewish and Arab Israelis exactly where they are – online. We no longer need the rabbis’ permission for anything. We can go straight into the smartphones, tablets, and computers of every Israeli, sharing the saving good news of Yeshua the Messiah! In the past, the message of the gospel came to Israel from outside our borders, delivered by people who didn’t understand our language, our culture, our heritage or our way of thinking. Today the messengers look very different. Now it is Jewish and Arab Israelis who are bringing the gospel back to where it started – back to our own people Israel. We can explain the gospel to our people in a way that makes sense to them, in our own native tongues of Hebrew and Arabic as only Israelis can, and help our people understand who Yeshua really is. The Orthodox rabbis in Israel operate an “anti missionary” organization called Yad L'Achim, specifically to fight against the spread of the gospel among the Jewish people. This very well-funded organization, works very closely with the Minister of Interior in the Israeli government. They seek to prevent Jewish people from leaving the confines of Rabbinic Judaism by any means necessary (not always legally), and relentlessly persecute us, the Jewish believers in Jesus in Israel. With over 90% of the names, photos and addresses of all the Messianic Jews in Israel on file, Yad L’Achim began sending a magazine called “Searching” to the homes of believers in Israel back in 2014. The magazine contains objections and refutations from Orthodox rabbis about the messiahship of Jesus, the credibility of the New Testament, and trying to ridicule and destroy the belief in Jesus. This caused several Jewish believers, even including some who had been missionaries, to deny their faith in Jesus and revert to rabbinic Judaism. Over the past five years, I decided to go over all of their magazines, books and videos, in order to answer their arguments and prove their objections false. Since 2015 we have released about 150 short videos where we share the gospel and directly refute these rabbinic objections to Jesus, New Testament and Christianity.

    A dynamic table of contents enables to jump directly to the chapter selected. Table of Contents - About This Book - The Duty Of Inquiry - The Weight Of Authority - The Limits Of Inference

    But exactly how do all the pieces fit together? In a single volume, The Promise and the Blessing connects the dots of the Old and New Testament books to reveal the big picture of salvation history. Organized chronologically rather than canonically, this book traces the flow of Israel’s history and shows how the New Testament proceeds out of the Old. It begins with God’s creation of the cosmos and the initial problem of the fall of man. Then it traces God’s solutions to that problem as he selects first one man, Abraham, then his line, and then the nation of Israel to provide the Messiah. Finally, it focuses on the Messiah himself and looks at how the gospel of Jesus was spread throughout the known world.The Promise and the Blessing is easy to use and ideal for anyone who wants to understand the grand narrative of the Bible. It features numerous beautiful, full-color photos, as well as sidebars and brief, fascinating “breakouts” of supplementary information. Maps, illustrations, summaries, and insightful notes help to illuminate the text. Field-tested in the classroom, The Promise and the Blessing is designed for Old and New Testament survey classes and will provide all readers of the Bible with a better understanding of how the drama that began in Eden winds through Israel’s history to its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

    But philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark sees it differently. Cyborgs, he writes, are not something to be feared--we already are cyborgs. In Natural-Born Cyborgs, Clark argues that what makes humans so different from other species is our capacity to fully incorporate tools and supporting cultural practices into our existence. Technology as simple as writing on a sketchpad, as familiar as Google or a cellular phone, and as potentially revolutionary as mind-extending neural implants--all exploit our brains' astonishingly plastic nature. Our minds are primed to seek out and incorporate non-biological resources, so that we actually think and feel through our best technologies. Drawing on his expertise in cognitive science, Clark demonstrates that our sense of self and of physical presence can be expanded to a remarkable extent, placing the long-existing telephone and the emerging technology of telepresence on the same continuum. He explores ways in which we have adapted our lives to make use of technology (the measurement of time, for example, has wrought enormous changes in human existence), as well as ways in which increasingly fluid technologies can adapt to individual users during normal use. Bio-technological unions, Clark argues, are evolving with a speed never seen before in history. As we enter an age of wearable computers, sensory augmentation, wireless devices, intelligent environments, thought-controlled prosthetics, and rapid-fire information search and retrieval, the line between the user and her tools grows thinner day by day. This double whammy of plastic brains and increasingly responsive and well-fitted tools creates an unprecedented opportunity for ever-closer kinds of human-machine merger, he writes, arguing that such a merger is entirely natural. A stunning new look at the human brain and the human self, Natural Born Cyborgs reveals how our technology is indeed inseparable from who we are and how we think.

    An apocyphral invention by some 17th or 18th century scolar, or a transcrpit of what it appears to be - a hitherto unheard of letter to St Augustine to a woman he renounced for chastity? VITA BREVIS is both an entrancing human document and a fascinating insight into the life and philosophy of St.Augustine. Gaarder'sinterpretation of Floria's letter is as playful, inventive and questioning as Sophie's World. About The Author: Jostein Gaarder was born in Olso, Norway on August 8, 1952. A former high school philosophy teacher, he now writes numerous novels for children and adults. His best known work is Sophie's World. He has received numerous awards including the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1994 for Sophie's World, the Buxtehude Bulle in 1997, and the Willy-Brandt-Award in 2004.

    Burge details a comprehensive picture of an increasingly significant group--Americans who say they have no religious affiliation.The growth of the nones in American society has been dramatic. In 1972, just 5 percent of Americans claimed "no religion" on the General Social Survey. In 2018, that number rose to 23.7 percent, making the nones as numerous as both evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. Every indication is that the nones will be the largest religious group in the United States in the next decade.Burge illustrates his precise but accessible descriptions with charts and graphs drawn from over a dozen carefully curated datasets, some tracking changes in American religion over a long period of time, others large enough to allow a statistical deep dive on subgroups such as atheists and agnostics. Burge also draws on data that tracks how individuals move in and out of religion over time, helping readers understand what type of people become nones and what factors lead an individual to return to religion.The Nones gives readers a nuanced, accurate, and meaningful picture of the growing number of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. Burge explains how this rise happened, who the nones are, and what they mean for the future of American religion.

    A preeminent scholar, writer, and teacher, he has had a profound influence on millions of people. To him, mythology was the "song of the universe, the music of the spheres." With Bill Moyers, one of America's most prominent journalists, as his thoughtful and engaging interviewer, The Power Of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit.

    Continuously in print since 1932, Ortega's vision of Western culture as sinking to its lowest common denominator and drifting toward chaos brought its author international fame and has remained one of the influential books of the 20th century.

    In a world that seesaws between unconditional love and acceptance and blind hatred and exclusion, Hope on a Tightrope will satisfy readers in search of deep wells of inspiration and challenge that marries the mind to the heart.This gift book features an original CD that highlights Dr. West’s outstanding spoken-word artistry. His August 2007 CD release Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations that featured collaborations with best-selling artists Prince, Jill Scott, and Andre 3000 topped the charts as Billboard’s #1 Spoken Word album.

    In On Beauty and Being Just Elaine Scarry not only defends beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed press us toward a greater concern for justice. Taking inspiration from writers and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch as well as her own experiences, Scarry offers up an elegant, passionate manifesto for the revival of beauty in our intellectual work as well as our homes, museums, and classrooms.Scarry argues that our responses to beauty are perceptual events of profound significance for the individual and for society. Presenting us with a rare and exceptional opportunity to witness fairness, beauty assists us in our attention to justice. The beautiful object renders fairness, an abstract concept, concrete by making it directly available to our sensory perceptions. With its direct appeal to the senses, beauty stops us, transfixes us, fills us with a surfeit of aliveness. In so doing, it takes the individual away from the center of his or her self-preoccupation and thus prompts a distribution of attention outward toward others and, ultimately, she contends, toward ethical fairness.Scarry, author of the landmark The Body in Pain and one of our bravest and most creative thinkers, offers us here philosophical critique written with clarity and conviction as well as a passionate plea that we change the way we think about beauty.