But not everyone accepts the same religious premises or recognizes the same spiritual authorities. Are there public arguments--reasons that can be given that do not presuppose agreement on religious grounds or common religious commitments--that can guide our thoughts and actions, as well as our laws and public policies?In Ten Universal Principles: A Brief Philosophy of the Life Issues, Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer sets out, in a brief, yet highly-readable and lucid style, ten basic principles that must govern the reasonable person's thinking and acting about life issues. A highly-regarded philosopher, Father Spitzer provides an intelligent outline for thinking and talking about human life. This book is a powerful tool for persuasively articulating and effectively inculturating a prolife philosophy.

    S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—was one of the foremost religious philosophers of the twentieth century; a thinker whose far-reaching influence on Christianity continues to be felt today.Demonstrating Lewis’s wide range of interests, Present Concerns includes nineteen essays that reveal his thoughts about democratic values, threats to educational and spiritual fulfillment, literary censorship, and other timely topics, offering invaluable wisdom for our own times.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    It’s a counterculture fusion of politics and pop, and it’s taking over a high school near you. Like the waves that came before it, it’s got passion, music, and anti-authority posturing, but more than anything else, this one has God. So what does it mean when today’s youth counterculture has a mindset more akin to Jerry Falwell’s than Abbie Hoffman’s? In RIGHTEOUS: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, Lauren Sandler, a dynamic young journalist, reports from this junction of Evangelicalism and youth culture, traveling across the country to investigate the alternative Christian explosion. Using the grassroots modus operandi of the 1960s, these religious kids – part of the “Disciple Generation” as Sandler calls it – turn an antiauthoritarian sneer toward liberalism, feminism, pacifism, and every other hallmark of that era’s counterculture. And they’re engaging their peers with startling success, fusing pop culture, politics, and religion as they preach from the pulpit of the skate park, bar, and rock concert. Secular, liberal, and practically the embodiment of everything Evangelicalism deems unholy, Sandler travels with skateboard missionaries, hangs out with the tattooed members of a postpunk Seattle megachurch that has evolved into a self-sufficient community, camps out with a rock’n’roll antiabortion group, and gets to know the rap preachers who are merging hip-hop’s love of money with old-fashioned bible-beating fundamentalism. Much more than a mere observer, she connects with these young people on an intimate level, and the candor with which they reveal themselves to her is truly astonishing. Illuminating, often troubling, and unapologetically frank, RIGHTEOUS introduces a bold new voice into the ongoing debate over religion in American life. And it is the first in-depth front-line exploration of the country’s new moral majority – dressed up in punk-rock garb – and what its influence could mean for the future of America. BACKCOVER: Advanced Praise: “Lauren Sandler obliterates the naïve and complacent hope that keeps most secularists and religious moderates sleeping peacefully each night-the hope that, in 21st century America, the young know better than to adopt the lunatic religious certainties of a prior age. The young do not know better. In their schools, skate-parks, rock concerts, and in the ranks of our nation’s military, our children are gleefully preparing a bright future of ignorance and religious fascism for us all. If you have any doubt that there is a culture war that must be waged and won by secularists in America, read this book.” —Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation “It is no easy thing to enter into the world of the young evangelicals, to feel deeply their alienation, to breathe their air and share their electric conviction that they are the rising counterculture against an empty world. Lauren Sandler has done it, and done it with an effervescence and honesty that make her travels in Disciple America jump off the page.” —Todd Gitlin, Professor of Journalism and Sociology, Columbia University, and author of The Intellectuals and the Flag "At once controversial, critical, blasphemous and compassionate, Righteous offers a compelling journey into a growing youth subculture typically dismissed by urban intellectuals. Sandler has written a provocative and illuminating portrait of young people desperately seeking meaning, community and love in an empty, often terrifying social landscape. Evangelical youth---the Disciple Generation--- are a generation rising, and we do need to pay attention.” —Dr. Donna Gaines, sociologist and author of Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids and A Misfit's Manifesto: The Spiritual Journey of a Rock & Roll Heart “Lauren Sandler has traveled among the believers and returned with a story that alarms, informs, and enlightens. She reveals the rise of a fundamentalist-style youth movement that has replaced faith with closed-minded certainty and is frighteningly cult-like. Read this book and you will understand this Disciple Generation and the challenge it poses to a civil society.” —Michael D'Antonio, former Newsday religion writer and author of Fall From Grace and Heaven on Earth “Righteous is a lively, probing account of today's fresh, sometimes bizarre sub- cultures of American evangelism. Both the term ‘alternative’ and ‘evangelical’ will mean something new to you after this book. Sandler's conclusions are important: These kids have been forgotten by their original social worlds, by secular organizations and even by Left-Liberal causes. In a cold new world, getting saved can now seem like a young American's only source of community and warmth.” —Alissa Quart, author of Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child “Righteous is the most adroit and fascinating examination of a great national ill, the muddling of faith and politics, the secular and the divine.” —Brad Land, author of Goat

    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.

    With the skill of a seasoned journalist and the passion of an amateur sleuth, he moves from scholarly conclave in California to archaeologcal digs in Israel, tracking down the story of the astounding consensus emerging from a varied group of experts.

    He shows us that a revival is happening, as people of faith and moral conviction seek common ground for change.Wallis also reminds us that religious faith was a driving force behind our greatest national reforms, such as the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement. These "great awakenings" happened periodically at crucial times in our nation's history to propel us toward the common good. The time is ripe for another movement that will transform this country. With The Great Awakening, Wallis helps us rediscover our moral center and provides both the needed inspiration and a concrete plan to hold politics accountable and find solutions to our greatest challenges.

    Explains the history, doctrines, and beliefs of the Islamic faith; outlines the life and philophies of Muhammad; describes Islamic contributions to the arts and sciences; and describes its rituals, prayers, and holidays.

    The authors of these books—Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Victor J. Stenger—have come to be known as the "New Atheists." Predictably, their works have been controversial and attracted a good deal of critical reaction. In this new book, Victor J. Stenger, whose God: The Failed Hypothesis was on the New York Times bestseller list in 2007, reviews and expands upon the principles of New Atheism and answers many of its critics. He demonstrates in detail that naturalism—the view that all of reality is reducible to matter and nothing else—is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe, from the most distant galaxies to the inner workings of the brain that result in the phenomenon of mind. Stenger disputes the claim of many critics that the question of whether God exists is beyond the ken of science. On the contrary, he argues that absence of evidence for God is, indeed, evidence of absence when the evidence should be there and is not. Turning from scientific to historical evidence, Stenger then points out the many examples of evil perpetrated in the name of religion. He also notes that the Bible, which is still taken to be divine revelation by millions, fails as a basis for morality and is unable to account for the problem of unnecessary suffering throughout the world. Finally, he discusses the teachings of ancient nontheist sages such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Confucius, whose guidelines for coping with the problems of life and death did not depend upon a supernatural metaphysics. Stenger argues that this "way of nature" is far superior to the traditional supernatural monotheisms, which history shows can lead to a host of evils. The New Atheism is a well-argued defense of the atheist position and a strong rebuttal of its critics.

    When the bound papyrus pages of this lost gospel finally reached scholars who could unlock its meaning, they were astounded. Here was a gospel that had not been seen since the early days of Xianity, & which few experts had even thought existed–a gospel told from the perspective of Judas Iscariot, history’s ultimate traitor. Far from being a villain, the Judas that emerges in its pages is a hero. In this radical reinterpretation, Jesus asks Judas to betray him. In contrast to the New Testament Gospels, Judas is presented as a role model for all those who wish to be disciples of Jesus. He's the one apostle who truly understands Jesus. This volume is the 1st publication of the remarkable gospel since it was condemned as heresy by early Church leaders, most notably by Irenaeus, in 180. Hidden away in a cavern in Middle Egypt, the codex containing the gospel was discovered by farmers in the 1970s. In the intervening years the papyrus codex was bought & sold by antiquities traders, hidden away & carried across three continents, all the while suffering damage that reduced much of it to fragments. In 2001, it finally found its way into the hands of a team of experts who would painstakingly reassemble & restore it. The Gospel of Judas has been translated from its original Coptic into clear prose. It's accompanied by commentary that explains its history in the context of the early Church, offering a new way of understanding the message of Jesus.

    The lectures were rewritten and issued as a book later that year. They mark a watershed in the development of Western esotericism. Steiner wrote of the idea behind his book:"The title Christianity As Mystical Fact was one I gave to this work eight years ago, when I gathered together the content of lectures given in 1902. It was meant to indicate the special approach adopted in the book. Its theme is not just the mystical side of Christianity in a historical presentation. It was meant to show, from the standpoint of a mystical awareness, how Christianity came into being."Behind this was the idea that spiritual happenings were factors in the emergence of Christianity, which could only be observed from such a point of view. It is for the book itself to demonstrate that, by 'mystical, ' I do not in any way imply a vague intuition rather than strict scientific argument. In many circles, mysticism is understood as just that, and therefore it is distinguished from the concerns of all 'genuine' science."In this book, however, I use the term to mean a 'presentation of spiritual reality'--a reality accessible only to a knowledge drawn from the sources of spiritual life itself. Anyone who denies the possibility of such knowledge in principle will find its contents hard to comprehend; any reader who accepts the idea that mysticism may coexist with the clarity of the natural sciences, may acknowledge that the mystical aspect of Christianity must be described mystically."This is a significant book--for Steiner's own development, that of Western esotericism, and our own understanding of the Christ event. Readers will find the evolutionary development from the ancient Mysteries through the great Greek philosophers to the events portrayed in the Gospels.Included are an informative introduction and annotated notes by Andrew Welburn and an afterword by Michael Debus, a priest of The Christian Community, who summarizes the book and places it in context.CONTENTS: Introduction by Christopher BamfordPreface by Andrew Welburn1. The Mysteries and Mysteriosophy2. The Mysteries and Pre-Socratic Philosophy3. Platonic Mysteries4. Myth and Mysteriosophy5. The Egyptian and Other Eastern Mysteries6. The Evidence of the Gospels7. The "Miracle" of Lazarus8. The Apocalypse of John6. Jesus in His Historical Setting10. The Essence of Christianity11. Christian and Pagan Wisdom12. Augustine and the ChurchAppendix: Original Prefaces and Additional MaterialsAfterword by Michael DebusTranslator's NotesThis book is a translation from German of �Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache und die Mysterien des Altertum� (GA 8). Cover image: Photo of Bordeaux Cathedral by James Nicholls.

    Boyd adds another counterintuitive and provocative thesis to his corpus. While conservative scholars and pastors have struggled for years to show that the Bible is without errors, Boyd considers this a fool's errand. Instead, he says, we should embrace the mistakes and contradictions in Scripture, for they show that God chose to use fallible humans to communicate timeless truths. Just as God ultimately came to save humanity in the form of a human, God chose to impart truth through the imperfect medium of human writing. Instead of the Bible's imperfections being a reason to attack its veracity, these "problems" actually support the trustworthiness of Christian Scripture. Inspired Imperfection is required reading for anyone who's questioned the Bible because of its contradictions.

    Nearly forty scholars worldwide contributed to the translation and interpretation of the Jewish Study Bible, representing the best of Jewish biblical scholarship available today. A committee of highly-respected biblical scholars and rabbis from the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism movements produced this modern translation.No knowledge of Hebrew is required for one to make use of this unique volume. The Jewish Study Bible uses The Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation.Since its publication, the Jewish Study Bible has become one of the most popular volumes in Oxford's celebrated line of bibles. The quality of scholarship, easy-to-navigate format, and vibrant supplementary features bring the ancient text to life.* Informative essays that address a wide variety of topics relating to Judaism's use and interpretation of the Bible through the ages. * In-text tables, maps, and charts. * Tables of weights and measures. * Verse and chapter differences. * Table of Scriptural Readings. * Glossary of technical terms. * An index to all the study materials. * Full color New Oxford Bible Maps, with index.

    But how accurate are the popular images of Satan? How--and why--did this rather minor biblical character morph into the very embodiment of evil? T.J. Wray and Gregory Mobley guide readers on a journey to retrace Satan's biblical roots. Engaging and informative, The Birth of Satan is a must read for anyone who has ever wondered about the origins of the Devil.