Showing results for "Gods" in Comparative Religion

Deepak Chopra, whose extraordinary Enlightenment series includes the phenomenal New York Times bestsellers Buddha and Jesus, delivers the most powerful installment yet: God. In this beautiful and thought-provoking teaching novel—a Story of Revelation—one of the Western World’s acknowledged...

Religion is foundational to what it means to be human. Our quest for meaning is as ancient as our very existence, stretching back to a time when Neanderthal burials and Paleolithic figurines suggest our ancestors recognized a power that transcended visible reality. From ancient civilizations to the 21st century, belief in a higher power seems to be a universal human instinct. These 12 thought-provoking lectures introduce you to the world of comparative religion, giving you insights into a variety of religious expressions and human cultures.

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion "God" frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word "God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths.

Who is Allah? What does He ask of those who submit to His teachings? Pulitzer Prize-winner Jacke Miles gives us a deeply probing, revelatory portrait of the world’s second largest, fastest-growing and perhaps most tragically misunderstood religion. In doing so, Miles illuminates what is unique...

Does God exist? How do you justify your belief or unbelief to others? This special series invites you to join some of the world’s leading thinkers in the serious civil conversation you crave. Daring to ask the big questions, your host, Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, holds 18 riveting one-on-one interviews with the leading figures of our day. A gifted moderator, Dr. Kuhn creates equilibrium through his even-handed questions and eagerness to give everyone a seat at the table. You’ll hear from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers as well as prominent atheists.

The days when western Christians could ignore the influence of Islam are over.Today as never before, the world’s second largest religion is shaping our culture, and words such as jihad, imam, Quran, and fatwa have entered our vocabulary. While all Muslims are no more alike than all Christians...

A groundbreaking new look at the story of America. At the heart of the nation's spiritual history are audacious and often violent scenes. But the Puritans and the shining city on the hill give us just one way to understand the United States. Rather than recite American history from a Christian...

A noted biblical scholar explores how the claim of divine choice has been used from ancient times to the present to justify territorial expansion and prejudice. The Bible describes many individuals and groups as specially chosen by God. But does God choose at all? Michael Coogan explains the...

Henry Mulford Tichenor (1858 - 1922) was a writer and journalist, who was a very active free thinker in the early Twentieth Century. A special target of Tichenor was organized religion, which he viewed as an absurdly contrived cultural artefact. In The Olympian Gods he applies a critical scalpel to the religion of the ancient Greeks, which he regarded as an obvious precursor to Christianity.

How did human societies scale up from small, tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today - even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? How did organized religions with "Big Gods" - the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths - spread to colonize most minds in the world? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising and provocative argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization are one and the same, and answer each other.

> God Speaks Again is an introduction to the Bahá'í Faith and a must-read for those who are on the spiritual path seeking independent investigation of truth, as well as those Bahá'ís who would like to expand their knowledge of the Bahá'í Faith, including its history and principles. Bahá'ís believe that religions come from the same source and are, in essence, successive chapters of one religion from God. The Bahá’í’ Faith is a recognized independent world religion attracting increasing attention - and a growing number of followers.

What does tomorrow hold for the way we worship God? In The Future of God, Karen Armstrong guides us through a bewildering landscape, over many centuries and civilizations, to show how our concept of God has evolved with the passage of time. Armstrong suggests ways that prayer, imagination, and silence can help everyone on the spiritual path today enter the mystery within our depths and recognize God in ourselves and others.

Studies find that the most frequent reason for rejecting Christianity is that people could not get answers to their doubts. Finding Truth unpacks strategic principles that penetrate to the core of any perspective, to uncover its deepest motivations and weigh its claims.

Western Christianity's long-standing support of Israel has, perhaps unintentionally, nurtured a prejudice against Arab people—the descendants of Abraham's first son, Ishmael. Author Tony Maalouf contends that this bias differs dramatically from the biblical portrayal of Ishmael and the nations that have sprung from him. With meticulous research and theological astuteness, Maalouf surfaces the positive portrayal of the Arab people in ancient and prophetic history, clearly showing that the Israeli-Arab conflict is a recent development in history.

When Tenzin Lahkpa is 15 years old, his parents give him over to a local temple in Tibet as an offering. Unable to change his fate, he wholeheartedly embraces his life as a monk and begins a quest for full enlightenment through the teachings of Buddhism. But his desire to go deeper only grows, leading him to unexpected conclusions.... Follow the fascinating, never-before-told, true story of what causes a highly dedicated Tibetan Buddhist monk to make the radical decision to walk away from the teachings of Buddha and leave his monastery to follow Jesus Christ.