Christopher Hitchens continues to make the case for a splendidly godless universe in this first-ever gathering of the influential voices--past and present--that have shaped his side of the current (and raging) God/no-god debate. With Hitchens as your erudite and witty guide, you'll be led through a wealth of philosophy, literature, and scientific inquiry, including generous portions of the words of Lucretius, Benedict de Spinoza, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mark Twain, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Albert Einstein, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and many others well-known and lesser known. And they're all set in context and commented upon as only Christopher Hitchens political and literary journalist extraordinaire can.” (Los Angeles Times) Atheist? Believer? Uncertain? No matter: The Portable Atheist will speak to you and engage you every step of the way.

    Now Europe's foremost philosopher and activist confronts his spiritual roots and the religion that has always inspired and shaped him--but that he has never fully reckoned with.The Genius of Judaism is a breathtaking new vision and understanding of what it means to be a Jew, a vision quite different from the one we're used to. It is rooted in the Talmudic traditions of argument and conflict, rather than biblical commandments, borne out in struggle and study, not in blind observance. At the very heart of the matter is an obligation to the other, to the dispossessed, and to the forgotten, an obligation that, as L'vy vividly recounts, he has sought to embody over decades of championing "lost causes," from Bosnia to Africa's forgotten wars, from Libya to the Kurdish Peshmerga's desperate fight against the Islamic State, a battle raging as we speak. L'vy offers a fresh, surprising critique of a new and stealthy form of anti-Semitism on the rise as well as a provocative defense of Israel from the left. He reveals the overlooked Jewish roots of Western democratic ideals and confronts the current Islamist threat while intellectually dismantling it. Jews are not a "chosen people," L'vy explains, but a "treasure" whose spirit must continue to inform moral thinking and courage today.L'vy's most passionate book, and in many ways his most personal, The Genius of Judaism is a great, profound, and hypnotic intellectual reckoning--indeed a call to arms--by one of the keenest and most insightful writers in the world.Praise for The Genius of Judaism"In The Genius of Judaism, L'vy elaborates on his credo by rebutting the pernicious and false logic behind current anti-Semitism and defends Israel as the world's most successful multi-ethnic democracy created from scratch. L'vy also makes the case for France's Jews being integral to the establishment of the French nation, the French language, and French literature. And last, but certainly not least, he presents a striking interpretation of the Book of Jonah. . . . A tour de force."--Forbes"Ardent . . . L'vy's message is essentially uplifting: that the brilliant scholars of Judaism, the authors of the Talmud, provide elucidation into 'the great questions that have stirred humanity since the dawn of time.' . . . A philosophical celebration of Judaism."--Kirkus Reviews"L'vy (Left in Dark Times), a prominent French journalist and politically engaged philosopher, turns his observations inward here, pondering the teachings of Judaism and the role they have played in contemporary European history as well as in his own life and intellectual inquiry. . . . [L'vy's] musings on the meaning of the story of Jonah and the relevance of symbolic Ninevahs in our time are both original and poetic. . . . A welcome addition to his oeuvre."--Publishers Weekly

    Drawing on cutting-edge historical and archeological research, he traces the story of how, when, and why Jews and Christians gradually granted authority to texts that had long lay dormant in a dusty temple archive. The Bible, Satlow maintains, was not the consecrated book it is now until quite late in its history. He describes how elite scribes in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E. began the process that led to the creation of several of our biblical texts. It was not until these were translated into Greek in Egypt in the second century B.C.E., however, that some Jews began to see them as culturally authoritative, comparable to Homer’s works in contemporary Greek society. Then, in the first century B.C.E. in Israel, political machinations resulted in the Sadducees assigning legal power to the writings. We see how the world Jesus was born into was largely biblically illiterate and how he knew very little about the texts upon which his apostles would base his spiritual leadership. Synthesizing an enormous body of scholarly work, Satlow’s groundbreaking study offers provocative new assertions about commonly accepted interpretations of biblical history as well as a unique window into how two of the world’s great faiths came into being.

    Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity.Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl's words resonate as strongly today--as the world faces a coronavirus pandemic, social isolation, and great economic uncertainty--as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim "Live as if you were living for the second time," and he unfolds his basic conviction that every crisis contains opportunity. Despite the unspeakable horrors of the camps, Frankl learned from the strength of his fellow inmates that it is always possible to "say yes to life"--a profound and timeless lesson for us all.

    He goes to the heart of his personal beliefs and speaks with passion about the existence of God; about the dignity of man; about pain, suffering, and evil; about eternal life and the meaning of salvation; about hope; about the relationship of Christianity to other faits and that of Catholicism to other branches of the Christian faith.With the humility and generosity of spirit for which he is known, John Paul II speaks directly and forthrightly to all people. His message: Be not afraid!

    The result of Murray's passionate exploration of the issue of surrender: why it's seemingly impossible and yet completely necessary.

    Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America is part memoir and part investigative analysis that explores the explosive and confusing intersection of faith, politics, and sexuality in Christian America.The quest to find an answer is at the heart of Does Jesus Really Love Me?—a personal journey of belief, an investigation, and a portrait of a faith and a nation at odds by award-winning reporter Jeff Chu.From Brooklyn to Nashville to California, from Westboro Baptist Church and their “God Hates Fags” protest signs, to the pioneering Episcopalian bishop Mary Glasspool—who proclaims a message of liberation and divine love, Chu captures spiritual snapshots of Christian America at a remarkable moment, when tensions between both sides in the culture wars have rarely been higher.Funny and heartbreaking, perplexing and wise, Does Jesus Really Love Me? is an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual pilgrimage that reveals a nation in crisis.

    Avarice. Covetousness. Miserliness. Insatiable cupidity. Overreaching ambition. Desire spun out of control. The deadly sin of Greed goes by many names, appears in many guises, and wreaks havoc on individuals and nations alike.In this lively and generous book, Phyllis A. Tickle argues that Greed is the Matriarch of the Deadly Clan, the ultimate source of Pride, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, and Anger. She shows that the major faiths, from Hinduism and Taoism to Buddhism and Christianity regard Greed as the greatest calamity humans can indulge in, engendering further sins and eviscerating all virtues. As the Sikh holy book Adi Granth asks: Where there is greed, what love can there be? Tickle takes a long view of Greed, from St. Paul to the present, focusing particularly on changing imaginative representations of Greed in Western literature and art. Looking at such works as the Psychomachia, or Soul Battle of the fifth-century poet Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, the paintings of Peter Bruegel and Hieronymous Bosch, the 1987 film Wall Street, and the contemporary Italian artist Mario Donizetti, Tickle shows how our perceptions have evolved from the medieval understanding of Greed as a spiritual enemy to a nineteenth-century sociological construct to an early twentieth-century psychological deficiency, and finally to a new view, powerfully articulated in Donizetti's mystical paintings, of Greed as both tragic and beautiful.Engaging, witty, brilliantly insightful, Greed explores the full range of this deadly sin's subtle, chameleon-like qualities, and the enormous destructive power it wields, evidenced all too clearly in the world today.

    Living in the first part of the eighteenth century in Podolia and Wolhynia, the Baal-Shem braved scorn and rejection from the rabbinical establishment and attracted followers from among the common people, the poor, and the mystically inclined. Here Buber offers a sensitive and intuitive account of Hasidism, followed by twenty stories about the life of the Baal-Shem. This book is the earliest and one of the most delightful of Buber's seven volumes on Hasidism and can be read not only as a collection of myth but as a key to understanding the central theme of Buber's thought: the I-Thou, or dialogical, relationship.All positive religion rests on an enormous simplification of the manifold and wildly engulfing forces that invade us: it is the subduing of the fullness of existence. All myth, in contrast, is the expression of the fullness of existence, its image, its sign; it drinks incessantly from the gushing fountains of life.--Martin Buber, from the introduction

    Describes the lives of Jews living in Spain as Catholics.

    Anita Renfroe pulls no punches as she gives women an ultimatum: hilarity or insanity? Take a look at the sorts of things that could drive a person crazy if they just weren't so funny!

    

    Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the religious propensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution. It would seem, therefore, as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you to a descriptive survey of those religious propensities." When William James went to the University of Edinburgh in 1901 to deliver a series of lectures on "natural religion," he defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." Considering religion, then, not as it is defined by--or takes place in--the churches, but as it is felt in everyday life, he undertook a project that, upon completion, stands not only as one of the most important texts on psychology ever written, not only as a vitally serious contemplation of spirituality, but for many critics one of the best works of nonfiction written in the 20th century. Reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, it is easy to see why. Applying his analytic clarity to religious accounts from a variety of sources, James elaborates a pluralistic framework in which "the divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions." It's an intellectual call for serious religious tolerance--indeed, respect--the vitality of which has not diminished through the subsequent decades.

    In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute—men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing. Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love. On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this story—which has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical album—is more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.

    I've got enough time on my hands...You invited me to raise whatever objections come to mind, so I'll jump right in. Here's one I've wondered about a lot: how could an all-powerful and all-loving God allow the church to do so much harm to humanity for so long? Isn't this supposed to be His true church, His representation on earth?...To my mind, this alone is quite enough to prove that the church does not possess any true philosophy...Well, you wanted an objection; you've got one. I look forward to your response...Love always, DadIn Letters from a Skeptic Dr. Gregory Boyd and his father Edward Boyd "debate" many other objections to Christianity, the church, and the Bible.• Why is the world so full of suffering? • Does God know the future? • How can you believe that a man rose from the dead? • Why do you think the Bible is inspired? • Do all non-Christians go to hell? • How can I be holy and sinful at the same time?Greg Boyd initiated this correspondence with his father in the hope that his father would eventually come to know Christ. After three years, 30 letters, and numerous phone calls, Edward K. Boyd did just that.Letters from a Skeptic will help you wrestle with the rational foundation of your own faith. It will also help you know how to share that faith with the skeptics you love.