The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu: Humanitarian Despotism and the Conditions of Modern Tyranny


Maurice Joly - 1864
    John Waggoner's superb translation of and commentary on Joly's Dialogue--the first faithful translation in English--seeks not only to update the sordid legacy of the Protocols but to redeem Joly's original work for serious study in its own right, rather than through the lens of antisemitism. Waggoner's work vindicates a man who was neither an antisemite nor a supporter of the kind of tyrannical politics the Protocols subsequently served and presents Maurice Joly, once much maligned and too long ignored, as one of the nineteenth century's foremost political thinkers.

All the Hits So Far But Don't Expect Too Much: Poetry, Prose & Other Sundry Items [With 14-Track CD]


Bradley Hathaway - 2005
    The commentary will contain background on the poems or more deeply delve into themes or topics discussed in the poems themselves. The spiritual seeker as well as the mature in faith will both benefit from the poems.

It's a Love Story


Lincee Ray - 2019
    And we love to fall in love. As children we pour our love into our pets and our friends. As teenagers we fall in love with musicians and actors and the boy whose locker is next to ours. As we mature, we long for romantic love that will last a lifetime. Sacrificial love, unexplainable love, familial love, desperate love. Love songs and love stories. Clearly we were created with the longing for love ingrained in our souls.With lots of wit and a bit of wisdom drawn from a lifetime of falling in love, Lincee Ray invites you to an unabashed celebration of that loving feeling. As she reveals the loves of her life and encourages you to recall your own, you'll discover alongside her that there is only one who can ever truly fulfill the deepest longings of our hearts. And he made us to be part of a divine love story.

The Divine Names/The Mystical Theology (Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation)


Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
    Tho the names refer to it as a unity, each name is different & so, taken together, they differentiate it. The implicit distinction between the godhead's unity & the multiplicity of the names is reflected in the names' structures themselves. Each includes a Greek prefix: hyper-, which indicates the unity of the godhead to whom names are applied. But each name is different, indicating the self-multiplication of the godhead. The result is a set of names like “over-good,” “over-being” & “over-life.” Dionysius also makes use of a 2nd, equivalent prefix: pro-. God is “pre-good” & “pre-being,” meaning it has the attributes of creatures in a way that transcends both creature & attribute. The prefixes must be applied strictly to the names when they're used of God itself. On the other hand, when the names are used only of God as cause, the prefixes may be left off, since the causality of God is already a procession into the differentiation properly signified by each of the different names. The most proper object of the names is the highest creature. The exemplary instances of goodness, being & life are the highest of the angels or intelligible minds. For this reason, he frequently refers to this type as an “intelligible name.” He incorporates into the number of intelligible names the traditional Neoplatonic intelligible categories: being, identity, difference, rest & motion, as well as the being, life & intellect triad. The fact God transcends the proper meaning of these names doesn't mean it ought be called “non-being,” “non-life” or “non-intellect.” He prefers to say God is “over being,” “over life” & “over intellect.” Few can contemplate the intelligible names in their purity. We require the names to be incarnated in visible things. Unable to see being, life & wisdom in themselves, we need a visible being who is living & wise. Such a person can then become the means by which we contemplate the intelligible. The teacher Hierotheus is one such visible incarnation of the names. But Hierotheus may do more than incarnate the names. He can also unfold them in speech, taking the unitary name of “being” & describing it at length, as is done in chapter 5. As he describes it, the name unfolds itself into a form that is more multiple, because of the many words used in his description. It thus approaches the multiple character of the human way of knowing & becomes more easily understood. When Dionysius praises “dissimilar similarities” over seemingly more appropriate symbolic names for God, he explains that negations are true to God & such dissimilar names serve as such negations. The Mystical Theology has this last, most arcane form of theology as its subject. Negations are properly applied not only to the names of the symbolic theology. Any & all of the divine names must be negated, beginning with those of the symbolic theology, continuing with the intelligible names & concluding with the theological representations. The godhead is no more “spirit,” “sonship” & “fatherhood” than it's “intellect” or “asleep.” These negations must be distinguished from privations. A privation is simply the absence of a given predicate, which could just as easily be present. The absence of the predicate is opposed to its presence: “lifeless” is opposed to “living.” But when we say that the godhead isn't “living” we don't mean it's “lifeless.” The godhead is beyond lifeless as well as beyond living. For this reason, he says our affirmations of the godhead aren't opposed to our negations, but that both must be transcended: even the negations must be negated. The most arcane passages of Mystical Theology revolve around the mystical as taken in itself & not as the act of negating the other forms of theology. Dionysius says that after all speaking, reading & comprehending of the names ceases, there follows a divine silence, darkness & unknowing. All three of these characteristics seem privative, as tho they were simply being the absence of speech, sight & knowledge respectively. But Dionysius doesn't treat them as privative. Instead, he uses spatio-temporal language to mark off a special place & time for them. Using as example Moses' ascent up Mt Sinai, Dionysius says that after Moses ascends thru the sensible & intelligible contemplation of God, he then enters the darkness above the mountain's peak. The darkness is located above the mountain. Moses enters it after his contemplation of God in the various forms of theology. Dionysius leaves the relation between Moses & the darkness obscure. Some commentators reduce it to a form of knowing, albeit an extraordinary form of knowing. Others reduce it to a form of affective experience, in which Moses feels something he can never know or explain in words. Dionysius himself does not give decisive evidence in favor of either interpretation. He speaks only of Moses' “union” with the ineffable, invisible, unknowable godhead.--Stanford Encyclopedia (edited)

Why Science Does Not Disprove God


Amir D. Aczel - 2013
    In this much-needed book, science journalist Amir Aczel profoundly disagrees and conclusively demonstrates that science has not, as yet, provided any definitive proof refuting the existence of God.Why Science Does Not Disprove God is his brilliant and incisive analyses of the theories and findings of such titans as Albert Einstein, Roger Penrose, Alan Guth, and Charles Darwin, all of whose major breakthroughs leave open the possibility— and even the strong likelihood—of a Creator. Bolstering his argument, Aczel lucidly discourses on arcane aspects of physics to reveal how quantum theory, the anthropic principle, the fine-tuned dance of protons and quarks, the existence of anti-matter and the theory of parallel universes, also fail to disprove God.

Tales of the Hasidim, Vols 1-2


Martin Buber - 1949
    Martin Buber devoted forty years of his life to collecting and retelling the legends of Hasidim. Nowhere in the last centuries, wrote Buber in Hasidim and Modern Man, has the soul-force of Judaism so manifested itself as in Hasidim... Without an iota being altered in the law, in the ritual, in the traditional life-norms, the long-accustomed arose in a fresh light and meaning.These marvelous tales--terse, vigorous, often cryptic--are the true texts of Hasidim. The hasidic masters, of whom these tales are told, are full-bodied personalities, yet their lives seem almost symbolic. Through them is expressed the intensity and holy joy whereby God becomes visible in everything.

The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief


James S. Spiegel - 2010
    They come armed with arguments to show that belief in God is absurd and dangerous. In the name of societal progress, they promote purging the world of all religious practice. And they claim that people of faith are mentally ill. Some of the new atheists openly declare their hatred for the Judeo-Christian God.Christian apologists have been quick to respond to the new atheists’ arguments. But there is another dimension to the issue which begs to be addressed--the root causes of atheism. Where do atheists come from? How did such folks as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens become such ardent atheists? If we are to believe them, their flight from faith resulted from a dispassionate review of the evidence. Not enough rational grounds for belief in God, they tell us. But is this the whole story?Could it be that their opposition to religious faith has more to do with passion than reason? What if, in the end, evidence has little to do with how atheists arrive at their anti-faith? That is precisely the claim in this book. Atheism is not at all a consequence of intellectual doubts. These are mere symptoms of the root cause--moral rebellion. For the atheist, the missing ingredient is not evidence but obedience.The psalmist declares, “The fool says in his heart there is no God” (Ps. 14:1), and in the book of Romans, Paul makes it clear that lack of evidence is not the atheist’s problem. The Making of an Atheist confirms these biblical truths and describes the moral and psychological dynamics involved in the abandonment of faith.

All Cracked Up


Patsy Clairmont - 2006
    Suddenly with no place to hide from the reality we realize life is all cracked up. Through the lens of our pain everything seems broken, bruised, and battered. But, as best-selling author Patsy Clairmont points out, there's a redeemer of our pain--Jesus. The Redeemer of the broken and discarded who mends our hearts, and even gives us a reason to laugh again.Telling inspirational stories of women's brokenness and healing, with tenderness and her trademark humor, Patsy Clairmont helps us realize that we're not alone in our struggles. Jesus buoys our spirits and refreshes our tired minds. As Patsy says, "life is so much easier to bear when its shared.'

Around The World In 45 Years


Charles M. Schulz - 1994
    Offers a collection of some of the most memorable Peanuts comic strips from the past forty-five years.

The Hope Valley Hubcap King


Sean Murphy - 2002
    Bibi, the first male in twelve generations of Browns not to have taken his own life, has a furious crush on a beautiful nine-fingered woman and an unbearable urge to understand the meaning of Time, the Universe, and America. So Bibi begins his quest--careening through a world of bizarre cults, gravity-defying crones, and lunatics of every stripe--all for a chance to meet his long-lost uncle Otto, a legendary junk-dealer who lives on the Hope Valley Hubcap Ranch. Because in a world that is spinning a little too fast, and a little too wildly, Bibi’s destiny is to find the essence of hope, the beauty of hubcaps, and the meaning of life in the Valley of the Hubcap King....With a touch of Candide, a dash of Don Quixote, and healthy dose of Zen, Sean Murphy’s wondrous, riotous novel is the story of an ordinary man searching through a hilariously off-kilter world--for the truths that might just save us all.From the Paperback edition.

The Greek Philosophers: from Thales to Aristotle


W.K.C. Guthrie - 1960
    Guthrie has written a survey of the great age of Greek philosophy - from Thales to Aristotle - which combines comprehensiveness with brevity. Without pre-supposing a knowledge of Greek or the Classics, he sets out to explain the ideas of Plato and Aristotle in the light of their predecessors rather than their successors, and to describe the characteristic features of the Greek way of thinking and outlook on the world. Thus The Greek Philosophers provides excellent background material for the general reader - as well as providing a firm basis for specialist studies.

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster


Bobby Henderson - 2006
    According to church founder Bobby Henderson, the universe and all life within it were created by a mystical and divine being: the Flying Spaghetti Monster. What drives the FSM's devout followers, a.k.a. Pastafarians? Some say it's the assuring touch from the FSM's "noodly appendage." Then there are those who love the worship service, which is conducted in pirate talk and attended by congregants in dashing buccaneer garb. Still others are drawn to the Church's flimsy moral standards, religious holidays every Friday, or the fact that Pastafarian heaven is way cooler: Does your heaven have a Stripper Factory and a Beer Volcano? Intelligent Design has finally met its match—and it has nothing to do with apes or the Olive Garden of Eden.Within these pages, Bobby Henderson outlines the true facts—dispelling such malicious myths as evolution ("only a theory"), science ("only a lot of theories"), and whether we're really descended from apes (fact: Humans share 95 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees, but they share 99.9 percent with pirates!)See what impressively credentialed top scientists have to say:"If Intelligent Design is taught in schools, equal time should be given to the FSM theory and the non-FSM theory."—Professor Douglas Shaw, Ph.D."Do not be hypocritical. Allow equal time for other alternative 'theories' like FSMism, which is by far the tastier choice."—J. Simon, Ph.D."In my scientific opinion, when comparing the two theories, FSM theory seems to be more valid than classic ID theory."—Afshin Beheshti, Ph.D.

The Choir Director Wore Out: The Final Chapter (The Liturgical Mysteries Book 15)


Mark Schweizer - 2018
    His writing skills have not improved (despite using Raymond Chandler's typewriter to bang out his hard-boiled prose), but his crime solving prowess is still first rate. He'll need it, since murder seems to abound in the little Appalachian town of St. Germaine, North Carolina. St. Germaine is in a season of change: a couple of new shops have appeared on the square; the Great Smoky Mountain Renaissance Festival has just opened out at Camp Possumtickle; and St. Barnabas Church has a new priest, straight from France. As well as having his Episcopal appointment from the bishop, Father Moneyduck is also a famous mystery author and detective. It's a good thing, because the police department has a raft of homicides on its hands with no end in sight. Of course, they do things a little differently in France ... Hayden Konig's 15th (and final!) mystery The Choir Director Wore Out It s not what you expect ... It's even funnier!

Essays in Humanism


Albert Einstein - 1950
    Written with a clear voice and a thoughtful perspective on the effects of science, economics, and politics in daily life, Einstein’s essays provide an intriguing view inside the mind of a genius addressing the philosophical challenges presented during the turbulence of the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the dawn of the Cold War. This authorized ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

All the Assholes in the World and Mine


Charles Bukowski
    There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.