A Meaningful World

Author : Benjamin Wiker
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
ISBN 13 : 0830874305
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Meaningful World written by Benjamin Wiker and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2009-09-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meaningful or meaningless? Purposeful or pointless? When we look at nature, whether at our living earth or into deepest space, what do we find? In stark contrast to contemporary claims that the world is meaningless, Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt reveal a cosmos charged with both meaning and purpose. Their journey begins with Shakespeare and ranges through Euclid's geometry, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics, the periodic table of the elements, the artistry of ordinary substances like carbon and water, the intricacy of biological organisms, and the irreducible drama of scientific exploration itself. Along the way, Wiker and Witt fashion a robust argument from evidence in nature, one that rests neither on religious presuppositions nor on a simplistic view of nature as the best of all possible worlds. In their exploration of the cosmos, Wiker and Witt find all the challenges and surprises, all of the mystery and elegance one expects from a work of genius.

Author : Benjamin Wiker
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 159698063X
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book 10 Books that Screwed Up the World written by Benjamin Wiker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-05-06 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You've heard of the "Great Books"? These are their evil opposites. From Machiavelli's The Prince to Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto to Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, these "influential" books have led to war, genocide, totalitarian oppression, family breakdown, and disastrous social experiments. And yet these authors' bad ideas are still popular and pervasive--in fact, they might influence your own thinking without your realizing it. Here with the antidote is Professor Benjamin Wiker. In his scintillating new book, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World (And 5 Others That Didn't Help), he seizes each of these evil books by its malignant heart and exposes it to the light of day.

Author : Ani Kalayjian
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1441901817
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Forgiveness and Reconciliation written by Ani Kalayjian and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-07-21 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all long for peace within ourselves, families, communities, countries, and throughout the world. We wonder what we can do about the multitude of con?icts currently wreaking havoc across the globe and the continuous reports of violence in communities as well as within families. Most of the time, we contemplate solutions beyond our reach, and overlook a powerful tool that is at our disposal: forgiveness. As a genocide survivor, I know something about it. As the genocide unfolded in Rwanda in 1994, I was devastated by what I believed to be the inevitable deaths of my loved ones. The news that my parents and my seven siblings had indeed been killed was simply unbearable. Anger and bitterness became my daily companions. Likewise, I continued to wonder how the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda could possibly reconcile after one of the most horrendous genocides of the 20th century. It was not until I came to understand the notion of forgiveness that I was able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Common wisdom suggests that forgiveness comes after a perpetrator makes a genuine apology. This wisdom informs us that in the aftermath of a wrongdoing, the offender must acknowledge the wrong he or she has done, express remorse, express an apology, commit to never repeating said harm, and make reparations to theextentpossible.Onlythencanthevictimforgiveandagreetoneverseekrevenge.

Author : L.J. Davis
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1590173945
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Meaningful Life written by L.J. Davis and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2010-07-21 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: L.J. Davis’s 1971 novel, A Meaningful Life, is a blistering black comedy about the American quest for redemption through real estate and a gritty picture of New York City in collapse. Just out of college, Lowell Lake, the Western-born hero of Davis’s novel, heads to New York, where he plans to make it big as a writer. Instead he finds a job as a technical editor, at which he toils away while passion leaks out of his marriage to a nice Jewish girl. Then Lowell discovers a beautiful crumbling mansion in a crime-ridden section of Brooklyn, and against all advice, not to mention his wife’s will, sinks his every penny into buying it. He quits his job, moves in, and spends day and night on demolition and construction. At last he has a mission: he will dig up the lost history of his house; he will restore it to its past grandeur. He will make good on everything that’s gone wrong with his life, and he will even murder to do it. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Author : Roberto Verganti
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262335832
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Overcrowded written by Roberto Verganti and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A more powerful innovation, which seeks to discover not how things work but why we need things. The standard text on innovation advises would-be innovators to conduct creative brainstorming sessions and seek input from outsiders—users or communities. This kind of innovating can be effective at improving products but not at capturing bigger opportunities in the marketplace. In this book Roberto Verganti offers a new approach—one that does not set out to solve existing problems but to find breakthrough meaningful experiences. There is no brainstorming—which produces too many ideas, unfiltered—but a vision, subject to criticism. It does not come from outsiders but from one person's unique interpretation. The alternate path to innovation mapped by Verganti aims to discover not how things work but why we need things. It gives customers something more meaningful—something they can love. Verganti describes the work of companies, including Nest Labs, Apple, Yankee Candle, and Philips Healthcare, that have created successful businesses by doing just this. Nest Labs, for example, didn't create a more advanced programmable thermostat, because people don't love to program their home appliances. Nest's thermostat learns the habits of the household and bases its temperature settings accordingly. Verganti discusses principles and practices, methods and implementation. The process begins with a vision and proceeds through developmental criticism, first from a sparring partner and then from a circle of radical thinkers, then from external experts and interpreters, and only then from users. Innovation driven by meaning is the way to create value in our current world, where ideas are abundant but novel visions are rare. If something is meaningful for both the people who create it and the people who consume it, business value follows.

Author : Ta-Nehisi Coates
Publisher : One World
ISBN 13 : 0679645985
Total Pages : 163 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Between the World and Me written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by One World. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Author : Stephen R. Kellert
Publisher : Island Press
ISBN 13 : 1610910761
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Good in Nature and Humanity written by Stephen R. Kellert and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientists, theologians, and the spiritually inclined, as well as all those concerned with humanity's increasingly widespread environmental impact, are beginning to recognize that our ongoing abuse of the earth diminishes our moral as well as our material condition. Many people are coming to believe that strengthening the bonds among spirituality, science, and the natural world offers an important key to addressing the pervasive environmental problems we face.The Good in Nature and Humanity brings together 20 leading thinkers and writers -- including Ursula Goodenough, Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan, Carl Safina, David Petersen, Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barry Lopez -- to examine the divide between faith and reason, and to seek a means for developing an environmental ethic that will help us confront two of our most imperiling crises: global environmental destruction and an impoverished spirituality. The book explores the ways in which science, spirit, and religion can guide the experience and understanding of our ongoing relationship with the natural world and examines how the integration of science and spirituality can equip us to make wiser choices in using and managing the natural environment. The book also provides compelling stories that offer a narrative understanding of the relations among science, spirit, and nature.Grounded in the premise that neither science nor religion can by itself resolve the prevailing malaise of environmental and moral decline, contributors seek viable approaches to averting environmental catastrophe and, more positively, to achieving a more harmonious relationship with the natural world. By bridging the gap between the rational and the religious through the concern of each for understanding the human relation to creation, The Good in Nature and Humanity offers an important means for pursuing the quest for a more secure and meaningful world.

Author : Iddo Landau
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190657685
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World written by Iddo Landau and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does life have meaning? Is it possible for life to be meaningful when the world is filled with suffering and when so much depends merely upon chance? Even if there is meaning, is there enough to justify living? These questions are difficult to resolve. There are times in which we face the mundane, the illogically cruel, and the tragic, which leave us to question the value of our lives. However, Iddo Landau argues, our lives often are, or could be made, meaningfulwe've just been setting the bar too high for evaluating what meaning there is. When it comes to meaning in life, Landau explains, we have let perfect become the enemy of the good. We have failed to find life perfectly meaningful, and therefore have failed to see any meaning in our lives. We must attune ourselves to enhancing and appreciating the meaning in our lives, and Landau shows us how to do that. In this warmly written book, rich with examples from the author's life, film, literature, and history, Landau offers new theories and practical advice that awaken us to the meaning already present in our lives and demonstrates how we can enhance it. He confronts prevailing nihilist ideas that undermine our existence, and the questions that dog us no matter what we believe. While exposing the weaknesses of ideas that lead many to despair, he builds a strong case for maintaining more hope. Along the way, he faces provocative questions: Would we choose to live forever if we could? Does death render life meaningless? If we examine it in the context of the immensity of the whole universe, can we consider life meaningful? If we feel empty once we achieve our goals, and the pursuit of these goals is what gives us a sense of meaning, then what can we do? Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World is likely to alter the way you understand your life.

Author : Alice Peck
Publisher : Ryland Peters & Small
ISBN 13 : 1800651503
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Around the World in 80 Spiritual Places written by Alice Peck and published by Ryland Peters & Small. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover some of the world's most awe-inspiring and holy places, from Stonehenge to Uluru, and Walden Pond to Angkor Wat. Humans have always searched for and created meaning in the world around them, whether in breathtakingly stunning natural features and phenomena, acknowledging the ancient home of a particular faith or movement, or honouring the location of a significant event. In this beautifully illustrated guide, Alice Peck discusses what makes a place spiritual – whether reaches of time, geography, the provision of sustenance or inspiration, or mystery and magic – and then explores 80 such locations around the globe. Rather than a comprehensive travel guide, the description of each one includes a detail or tip – something beautiful, strange, relatively unknown or unfamiliar – to allow readers to deepen their focus and perhaps experience the place in a different way than they might expect. If you are unable to travel at this time, this book will help you plan your next adventure. And if you are trying to limit your carbon footprint, each destination is accompanied by a related meditation, prayer, practice or quotation to help you connect to the spirit of it from your own home.

Author : Simon Jacobson
Publisher : William Morrow
ISBN 13 : 9780062856975
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Toward a Meaningful Life written by Simon Jacobson and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 2017-12-26 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toward a Meaningful Life is a spiritual road map for living based on the teachings of one of the foremost religious leaders of our time: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Head of the Lubavitcher movement for forty-four years and recognized throughout the world simply as “the Rebbe,” Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in June 1994, was a sage and a visionary of the highest order. Toward a Meaningful Life gives people of all backgrounds fresh perspectives on every aspect of their lives—from birth to death, youth to old age; marriage, love, intimacy, and family; the persistent issues of career, health, pain, and suffering; and education, faith, science, and government. We learn to bridge the divisions between accelerated technology and decelerated morality, between unprecedented worldwide unity and unparalleled personal disunity. Although the Rebbe’s teachings are firmly anchored in more than three thousand years of scholarship, the urgent relevance of these old-age truths to contemporary life has never been more manifest. At the threshold of a new world where matter and spirit converge, the Rebbe proposes spiritual principles that unite people as opposed to the materialism that divides them. In doing so, he continues to lead us toward personal and universal redemption, toward a meaningful life, and toward God.