Heartwarming Heresies

Heartwarming Heresies is a timely and much-needed book that delves into the very heart of many of the beliefs that are dearly held by many Evangelical Christians today. It’s the author’s contention that such beliefs may have little solid biblical foundation, but believers have adopted them nonetheless. It isn’t because they have researched them extensively in the Bible, but it’s ultimately because they have found them intellectually logical and emotionally reassuring. In this easy-to-read book, you will examine a dozen questions about “The Christian’s relationship with God,” “The nature and purpose of the church,” “What we can expect in heaven,” and “The devil and his hell.” The author challenges you to examine with him in light of the scriptures some of those things you believe. Are they thoroughly substantiated by the Bible, or have you unwittingly adopted a few spurious ideas along the way that may please your mind and warm your heart, but are ultimately a collection of heartwarming heresies?

It's an intriguing book that describes the pitfalls of a religious-dictated country. Robert Ingersoll was not a biblical scholar or theologian. He was interested in liberty and freedom of thought. In other words, he was a political advocate for civil rights who spoke about religion.

The History of Heresies and Their Refutation by St Alphonsus M. Liguori. Unedited Reprint of 1857 edition. Some references in Latin, the rest of the book is in English. In the First part, St Alphonsus M Liguori goes over the History of Heresies. A supplementary chapter was added by the translator of the Heresies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. In the Second Part, the Refutation of Heresies, the Holy Author comprises, in a small space, a vast amount of Theological information; in fact, there is no Heresy which cannot be refuted from it. 648 pages.

A lively examination of the heretics who helped Christianity become the world’s most powerful religion. From Arius, a fourth-century Libyan cleric who doubted the very divinity of Christ, to more successful heretics like Martin Luther and John Calvin, this book charts the history of dissent in the Christian Church. As the author traces the Church’s attempts at enforcing orthodoxy, from the days of Constantine to the modern Catholic Church’s lingering conflicts, he argues that heresy—by forcing the Church to continually refine and impose its beliefs—actually helped Christianity to blossom into one of the world’s most formidable religions. Today, all believers owe it to themselves to grapple with the questions raised by heresy. Can you be a Christian without denouncing heretics? Is it possible that new ideas challenging Church doctrine are destined to become as popular as Luther’s once-outrageous suggestions of clerical marriage and a priesthood of all believers? A delightfully readable and deeply learned new history, Heretics overturns our assumptions about the role of heresy in a faith that still shapes the world. “Wright emphasizes the ‘extraordinarily creative role’ that heresy has played in the evolution of Christianity by helping to ‘define, enliven, and complicate’ it in dialectical fashion. Among the world’s great religions, Christianity has been uniquely rich in dissent, Wright argues—especially in its early days, when there was so little agreement among its adherents that one critic compared them to a marsh full of frogs croaking in discord.” —The New Yorker

In 2004, Kentaro Toyama, an award-winning computer scientist, moved to India to start a new research group for Microsoft. Its mission: to explore novel technological solutions to the world's persistent social problems. Together with his team, he invented electronic devices for under-resourced urban schools and developed digital platforms for remote agrarian communities. But after a decade of designing technologies for humanitarian causes, Toyama concluded that no technology, however dazzling, could cause social change on its own. Technologists and policy-makers love to boast about modern innovation, and in their excitement, they exuberantly tout technology's boon to society. But what have our gadgets actually accomplished? Over the last four decades, America saw an explosion of new technologies – from the Internet to the iPhone, from Google to Facebook – but in that same period, the rate of poverty stagnated at a stubborn 13%, only to rise in the recent recession. So, a golden age of innovation in the world's most advanced country did nothing for our most prominent social ill. Toyama's warning resounds: Don't believe the hype! Technology is never the main driver of social progress. Geek Heresy inoculates us against the glib rhetoric of tech utopians by revealing that technology is only an amplifier of human conditions. By telling the moving stories of extraordinary people like Patrick Awuah, a Microsoft millionaire who left his lucrative engineering job to open Ghana's first liberal arts university, and Tara Sreenivasa, a graduate of a remarkable South Indian school that takes children from dollar-a-day families into the high-tech offices of Goldman Sachs and Mercedes-Benz, Toyama shows that even in a world steeped in technology, social challenges are best met with deeply social solutions.

Chastised by the Emperor, the Word Bearers set out on their own path - one that will eventually lead them to damnation and heresy… Distraught at the judgement of the Emperor, the Word Bearers cast their fury and fervour onto the battlefield. All the while they explore the old ways of Colchis, seeking their own path - one that can only lead to damnation and heresy…

"DAMNABLE HERESIES" "But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false prophets among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of." (II Peter 2:1-2) (KJV) The beliefs that are held by most Christians today, and throughout history, are not well thought-out or arrived at by revelation after years of searching for the truth. They are, rather, arrived at by learning what those in authority believe concerning a matter and then adhering to, and even defending, those points of "doctrine" or "orthodoxy" or "tenets of the faith" for the balance of the time that one wishes to remain in fellowship with those who share and defend those same points of "faith." The purpose of this book is to provide a means for those who may be enslaved by unbiblical points of Christian doctrine that depict God as a capricious, inconsistent, despot in His dealings with mankind (despite their protests to the contrary) to consider another point of view that is backed by scripture – not just the systematic theology or dogma of a respected theologian, bible teacher, or pastor. It is also designed to help those who believe differently from the "orthodox" thinking on such issues as predestination, original sin, eternal security, and "speaking in tongues," to be affirmed in their belief and to be armed anew with reasons for the convictions of their beliefs. Some quotes from the book... "A true Christian will jealously protect the true nature and will of God as He reveals Himself to us through His Word and through His Holy Spirit. Even apparently slight distortions of the Law, the Prophets, or the Gospel (the proclamation that the Law and the Prophets are fulfilled in the birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ) result in removing those who believe those distortions 'unto another gospel.'" "We have observed already in Scripture that God "...desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth" (I Timothy 2:4). As Scripture, reason, and direct experience show us, it is our own selfish pursuit of having things our own way that shuts us away from God's salvation not His will or predetermination of our eternal condition."