Got No Reason To Believe

Got No Reason to Believe By: Orval D. Strong For thousands of years, unscrupulous men have taken advantage of their superstitious and gullible brothers, convincing them that the Almighty exists and that the Bible is law. However, the Bible is only as reliable as the people who wrote it. Got No Reason to Believe: Christianity’s Failure to Prove Its Case provides proof of many inconsistencies found in the Holy Bible to make you question its truth.

Is religious belief reasonable? Of course the so-called New Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, energetically say, "No!," Many others, including some believers, insist that faith is utterly beyond reasoned argument. Faith, they declare, is believing something that reason tells you can't be so. In this way they think they shield belief from rational criticism. But philosopher Richard Purtill will have none of that approach to religion. In this newly updated classic work, Purtill carefully applies the power of the mind to understanding whether there is a rational basis for certain religious beliefs. His focus is on widely held Christian beliefs, although much of what he says applies also to other religious traditions. Purtill assesses the common objections to religious belief the claims that religious tenets are nonsensical, wishful thinking, the result of gullibility, immoral, or refuted by modern discoveries. Then he considers the arguments in favor of Christian belief by studying the nature of faith, of the universe, of morality, of happiness, and the world with God in it. He also scrutinizes certain beliefs involving claims of Christian revelation — the credentials of revelation, the idea of God, Jesus as God's Son, organized religion, and the last things (death, judgment, heaven and hell). The two appendices tackle the Christian doctrine of the Atonement and the influence of certain Christian writers on the revival of Christian belief in the 20th century. An updated For Further Reading section is included. Reason to Believe is not a work of revealed theology or religious devotion; it is a highly readable book on the philosophy of religion, aimed at the reader who wants to think seriously about religion but who doesn't know all the philosophers' and theologians' jargon and who may or may not be a committed believer.

Can their marriage survive the ultimate betrayal? Young and passionately in love, Clara and Ben Pipestone came from vastly different worlds. She was a college student, studying the indigenous people of the Great Plains. He fixed cars in the winter and followed the amateur Indian rodeo circuit all summer. Ignoring those who doomed their relationship to failure, they married, settled into their life in Bismarck, North Dakota, and had a beautiful daughter, Anna. But now, thirteen years later, Ben's alcoholism blurs his judgment and lands him in the arms of another woman. The betrayal has torn their marriage apart, and their daughter is paying the price. Shoplifting, drinking, and running with a bad crowd, Anna is out of control. Determined to save their troubled teenage daughter, Clara and Ben take Anna and join a two week trek on horseback across an unforgiving winter terrain, a journey across sacred land in remembrance of Ben's Lakota ancestors. Can their journey bring them a better understanding of the past and each other? Can it heal their broken trust and unite them as a family? Bestselling author Kathleen Eagle set aside a gratifying seventeen-year teaching career on a North Dakota Indian reservation to become a full-time novelist. The Lakota Sioux heritage of her husband and their three children has inspired many of her stories. Among her other honors, she has received the Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA Award.

Based on fieldwork among Pentecostal men in Caracas, Venezuela, this ethnography seeks an explanation for the explosion of Evangelical Protestantism, unraveling the cultural and personal dynamics of Evangelical conversion to show how and why these men make the choice to convert, and how they come to have faith in a new system of beliefs.

Reason to Believe is about teaching and the possibility of making positive change in education. The authors explore the way that American pragmatism and the rhetoric of North American romanticism work together to create a method for restoring hope to teachers and responsiveness to the systems they work within. What the book calls romantic/pragmatic rhetoric offers teachers a way to locate the roots of their beliefs and methods, to name them, and thus to act to change and challenge systems that have become in William James' phrase "tyrannical machines."

Since her youngest son's tragic death in 2002, Bonnie Brown has learned there is more to this life and to us than our human minds can understand. This knowledge didn't come in an "aha!" moment or an epiphany of understanding. It has come about as the result of an ongoing journey to "find" her son. Unwilling to be a victim and allow the all encompassing grief she was feeling to swallow her up, Bonnie Brown set out on a journey to "find" her beloved Cody. She refused to believe that he could be gone, extinguished as if he had never existed. She was certain of his physical death. She had sat and watched unflinchingly as the nurse removed him from the ventilator; the machine that had served as the only link between him and physical life. She heard the machine as it breathed for him one last time. She stroked his eyebrows and kissed his face and felt the absence of that energy we call "life". Where had that energy gone? That energy that is a person's essence, that energy that makes an individual unique. That was the part of Cody she was looking for. This is the story of that journey.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Deval Patrick, “an inspirational figure guided by optimism and hope who presaged the rise of President Obama” (The Boston Globe), recounts his extraordinary journey from the South Side of Chicago to the governorship of Massachusetts. “I’ve simply seen too much goodness in this country—and have come so far in my own journey—not to believe in those ideals, and my faith in the future is sometimes restored under the darkest clouds.”—Governor Deval Patrick In January 2007, Deval Patrick became the first black governor of the state of Massachusetts, one of only two black governors elected in American history. But that was just one triumphant step in an improbable life that began in a poor tenement on the South Side of Chicago, taking Patrick from a chaotic childhood to an elite boarding school in New England, from a sojourn doing relief work in Africa to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, and then to a career in politics. In this heartfelt and inspiring memoir, he pays tribute to the family, friends, and strangers who, through words and deeds, have instilled in him transcendent lessons of faith, perseverance, and friendship. In doing so, he reminds us of the power of community and the imperative of idealism. With humility, humor, and grace, he offers a road map for attaining happiness, empowerment, and success while also making an appeal for readers to cultivate those achievements in others, to feel a greater stake in this world, and to shape a life worth living. Warm, nostalgic, and inspirational, A Reason to Believe is destined to become a timeless tribute to a uniquely American odyssey and a testament to what is possible in our lives and our communities if we are hopeful, generous, and resilient. Governor Deval Patrick is donating a portion of the proceeds from A Reason to Believe to A Better Chance, a national organization dedicated to opening the doors to greater educational opportunities for young people of color.

Louis Jacobs was Britain's most gifted Jewish scholar. A Talmudic genius, outstanding teacher and accomplished author, cultured and easy-going, he was widely expected to become Britain's next Chief Rabbi. Then controversy struck. The Chief Rabbi refused to appoint him as Principal of Jews' College, the country's premier rabbinic college. He further forbade him from returning as rabbi to his former synagogue. All because of a book Jacobs had written some years earlier, challenging from a rational perspective the traditional belief in the origins of the Torah. The British Jewish community was torn apart. It was a scandal unlike anything they had ever previously endured. The national media loved it. Jacobs became a cause celebre, a beacon of reason, a humble man who wouldn't be compromised. His congregation resigned en masse and created a new synagogue for him in Abbey Road, the heart of fashionable 1960s London. It became the go-to venue for Jews seeking reasonable answers to questions of faith. A prolific author of over 50 books and hundreds of articles on every aspect of Judaism, from the basics of religious belief to the complexities of mysticism and law, Louis Jacobs won the heart and affection of the mainstream British Jewish community. When the Jewish Chronicle ran a poll to discover the Greatest British Jew, Jacobs won hands down. He said it made him feel daft. Reason To Believe tells the dramatic and touching story of Louis Jacobs's life, and of the human drama lived out by his family, deeply wounded by his rejection.