Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness


Richard Kearney - 2002
    Often overlooked in accounts of how we think about ourselves and others, Richard Kearney skilfully shows, with the help of vivid examples and illustrations, how the human outlook on the world is formed by the mysterious triumvirate of strangers, gods and monsters.Throughout, Richard Kearney shows how Strangers, Gods and Monsters do not merely reside in myths or fantasies but constitute a central part of our cultural unconscious. Above all, he argues that until we understand better that the Other resides deep within ourselves, we can have little hope of understanding how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the external world and how we can learn to live with them.

Islamiat: a core text for Cambridge O-Level


David Thomas - 2011
    The book also incorporates the selected Quranic surahs and ayaat, and the ahadith, along with translation and explanation of each, and questions from the 2011 sample CIE assessments. The textbook is accompanied by a teaching guide, and both components are endorsed by CIE as prescribed resources for the O level Islamiyat syllabus.

Bila Allah Menduga Kita


Alwi Alatas - 2009
    This life is full of troubles, and sometimes they kick us hard. But, whatever the problem, once you read and understand the content of this book, you will hopefully perceive this life differently and feel much comfortable. This book is written in Bahasa Melayu and very easy to understand. From the beginning to the end, the pages are full of touching stories and examples and also quotation from the Qur’an, Hadith, and sayings of wise people. It’s really value to buy it; it’s a must-read book.

The Temper of Our Time


Eric Hoffer - 1996
    Self-taught, his appetite for knowledge--history, science, mankind--formed the basis of his insight to human nature. The Temper of Our Time examines the influence of the juvenile mentality, the rise of automation, the black revolution, the regression of the back-to-nature movement, the intellectual vs. learning, and other relevent issues.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism


Max Weber - 1904
    In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms.

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (Updated With a New Epilogue)


Riane Eisler - 1987
    The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It shows that warfare and the war of the sexes are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible—and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting dramas of what happened in our past.

Among the Believers : An Islamic Journey


V.S. Naipaul - 1981
    An astonishing piece of travel writing and a timely and insightful analysis of Islamic fundamentalism"

Escaping from Eden: Does Genesis Teach That the Human Race Was Created by God or Engineered by Ets?


Paul Wallis - 2020
    However, various anomalies in the text clue us that we are not reading the original version of these stories. So what were the original narratives and what did they say about who we are and where we all came from? What was the earlier story of human origins, almost obliterated from the Hebrew Scriptures in the 6th century BC, and suppressed from Christian writing in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD? And what does any of this have to do with Extra Terrestrials? Escaping from Eden will take you on a journey around the world and into the mythologies of ancient Sumeria, Mesoamerica, India, Africa, and Greece to reveal a profound secret, hidden in plain sight in the text of the Bible. Far reaching and deeply controversial, this book points to truths about ourselves, the universe and everything that you may have long suspected but not dared to speak!

God, the Evolver: A Secular Approach to the Divine


Faiz King - 2018
    Ever since we stepped out of the dark ages and modern science started taking its first baby steps, people have been debating the connection between metaphysics and physics. And human evolution is one of the most controversial issues. Until now. This eye- opening book will offer you an in-depth understanding of evolution from a religio-scientific point of view. God The Evolver - Bridging The Gap Between Metaphysics & Science! If you are a serious free thinker without any religious or scientific prejudices, then this book is for you. If you are not afraid to step into spiritual no-man's land and test your knowledge, then this book will offer you a game-changing perspective. By combining religion, philosophy and science, author Faiz King has created a comprehensive guide to the struggle of religion and science. What Makes The Human Mind So Special? Back To Metaphysics. By the end of this book you will be able to understand the debate and realize that higher-order religious processes (e.g. Metaphysics) are necessary to realize the full extent of the rational and abstract properties of our human mind. And that's exactly what sets us apart from the rest of the creatures that live on this planet. God's Plan - How To Understand Centuries Of Evolution. After over 20 years of meticulous research, Faiz King has created the definitive successor to Charles Darwin's "The Origin Of Species" that is not afraid to take on this science giant and prove that Metaphysics (and subsequently God) is behind the development of modern science as we know it. Are You Ready To Embark On A Unique Spiritual Adventure Through Human Evolution?

Alternative Realities: Love in the Lives of Muslim Women


Nighat M. Gandhi - 2013
    Each chapter presents personal stories of women living in cities, small towns and villages in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the three lands to which Nighat Gandhi belongs. In writing their stories, she attempts to break the silence enshrouding Muslim women's sexuality and the ways in which they negotiate the restrictions placed on their freedoms within the framework of their culture. Women like Ghazala, who prefers the life of a second wife, 'living like a married single woman', to being bound within the ties of a conventional marriage, Nusrat and QT who believe theirs is a normal marriage, except that they are both women. Nisho, who refuses to accept that her trans-sexuality should deny her the right to love and Firdaus, writer and feminist, who can walk out of a loveless marriage but not give up on love, with or without marriage. Nighat also explores her own story as a woman who dared to make choices that pitted her against her family and cultures. Alternative Realities is her jihad or struggle to deconstruct the demeaning stereotypes that prevail about all Muslim women. It is a reflection of the myriad ways in which, despite these misogynistic forces, they continue to weave webs of love and peace in their own lives and in the lives of those they live with.

Conquering Your Own Goliaths


Steven A. Cramer - 1988
    And you can claim it beginning now. The well know Bible story of David and Goliath is the back drop that Steven A. Cramer uses to show how we can enlist the aid of the Lord in overcoming any of our problems. In our day, we do not have to face nine-foot giants physically, but often our Goliaths come in the form of spiritual giants that will not yield to a stone or sword.

The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures


Louis Theroux - 2005
    Or April, the Neo-Nazi bringing up her twin daughters Lamb and Lynx (who have just formed a white-power folk group for kids called Prussian Blue), and her youngest daughter, Dresden. For a decade now, Louis Theroux has been making programs about offbeat characters on the fringes of U.S. society. Now he revisits the people who have most intrigued him to try to discover what motivates them, and why they believe the things they believe. From his Las Vegas base (where else?), Theroux calls on these assorted dreamers, schemers, and outlaws--and in the process finds out a little about the workings of his own mind. What does it mean, after all, to be weird, or "to be yourself"? Do we choose our beliefs or do our beliefs choose us? And is there something particularly weird about Americans? America, prepare yourself for a hilarious look in the mirror that has already taken the rest of the English-speaking world by storm: "Paul Theroux's son writes with just as clear an eye for character and place as his father.... And he's funny.... Theroux's final analysis of American weirdness is true and new." -- Literary Review (England)

Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream


Rick Snedeker - 2020
    This is completely contrary to the Founding Fathers’ original vision of America; it was designed by them to be a secular democratic republic built on evidence-based Enlightenment values, emphatically not religious faith.Indeed, the Founders purposefully intended that a high, strong “wall of separation” keep church and state apart in the new nation, while allowing individual religious freedom untrammeled by government—and vice versa. But Christians with theocratic dreams keep trying to breach the wall. Through their efforts, God is now in evidence everywhere in the country—on our money, in our schools, even in high-level-government officials’ speeches. Freedom of — and from — religion is the American promise to all its people whatever their belief—or disbelief. This is how the Founding Fathers wanted it to be, not the undemocratic theocracy zealous evangelicals are trying to force on American society.

The God Delusion


Richard Dawkins - 2006
    He eviscerates the major arguments for religion, and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence.The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong, but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.

The Hour of Our Death


Philippe Ariès - 1977
    A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions of life in relation to death, each stage representing a virtual redefinition of human nature. Starting at the very foundations of Western culture, the eminent historian Phillipe Aries shows how, from Graeco-Roman times through the first ten centuries of the Common Era, death was too common to be frightening; each life was quietly subordinated to the community, which paid its respects and then moved on. Aries identifies the first major shift in attitude with the turn of the eleventh century when a sense of individuality began to rise and with it, profound consequences: death no longer meant merely the weakening of community, but rather the destruction of self. Hence the growing fear of the afterlife, new conceptions of the Last Judgment, and the first attempts (by Masses and other rituals) to guarantee a better life in the next world. In the 1500s attention shifted from the demise of the self to that of the loved one (as family supplants community), and by the nineteenth century death comes to be viewed as simply a staging post toward reunion in the hereafter. Finally, Aries shows why death has become such an unendurable truth in our own century--how it has been nearly banished from our daily lives--and points out what may be done to re-tame this secret terror. The richness of Aries's source material and investigative work is breathtaking. While exploring everything from churches, religious rituals, and graveyards (with their often macabre headstones and monuments), to wills and testaments, love letters, literature, paintings, diaries, town plans, crime and sanitation reports, and grave robbing complaints, Aries ranges across Europe to Russia on the one hand and to England and America on the other. As he sorts out the tangled mysteries of our accumulated terrors and beliefs, we come to understand the history--indeed the pathology--of our intellectual and psychological tensions in the face of death.