Book by Anderson, R., Leslie, L.

Product Description: This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. And it all started in Philadelphia more than seven decades ago with a local radio series that became an international sensation...read more

Katja Maria Vogt's Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato explores a Socratic intuition about the difference between belief and knowledge. Beliefs -- doxai -- are deficient cognitive attitudes. In believing something, one accepts some content as true without knowing that it is true; one holds something to be true that could turn out to be false. Since our actions reflect what we hold to be true, holding beliefs is potentially harmful for oneself and others. Accordingly, beliefs are ethically worrisome and even, in the words of Plato's Socrates, "shameful." As Vogt argues, this is a serious philosophical proposal and it speaks to intuitions we are likely to share. But it involves a notion of belief that is rather different from contemporary notions. Today, it is a widespread assumption that true beliefs are better than false beliefs, and that some true beliefs (perhaps those that come with justifications) qualify as knowledge. Socratic epistemology offers a genuinely different picture. In aiming for knowledge, one must aim to get rid of beliefs. Knowledge does not entail belief -- belief and knowledge differ in such important ways that they cannot both count as kinds of belief. As long as one does not have knowledge, one should reserve judgment and investigate by thinking through possible ways of seeing things. According to Vogt, the ancient skeptics and Stoics draw many of these ideas from Plato's dialogues, revising Socratic-Platonic arguments as they see fit. Belief and Truth retraces their steps through interpretations of the Apology, Ion, Republic, Theaetetus, and Philebus, reconstructs Pyrrhonian investigation and thought, and illuminates the connections between ancient skepticism and relativism, as well as the Stoic view that beliefs do not even merit the evaluations "true" and "false."

Product Description: All institutions concerned with the process of judging - whether it be deciding between alternative courses of action, determining a judge’s professional integrity, assigning culpability for an alleged crime, or ruling on the credibility of an asylum claimant - are necessarily directly concerned with the question of doubt...read more

In Faithful Doubt Guy Collins explores the role of doubt within theology and philosophy. Focusing on three philosophers--Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, and Slavoj Zizek--Faithful Doubt argues that atheism can be redeeming. Far from being inhospitable to faith, doubt is increasingly necessary for theology. As well as introducing the thought of contemporary philosophers, Faithful Doubt examines the significance of popular entertainment and narrative. Novels of Ursula Le Guin, Neal Stephenson, China Miéville, and others are read alongside Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. Fiction highlights the fluid nature of the sacred and the secular. On the question of evil, Faithful Doubt suggests that wisdom lies in acknowledging uncertainty. Weaving the story of Job together with St. Augustine, Donald MacKinnon, and Eleonore Stump, evil exemplifies the necessity for doubt within theology. Faithful Doubt brings a new perspective to debates about the relationship between faith and reason. Concluding with a discussion of Søren Kierkegaard, Collins presents a compelling case for harnessing atheism and doubt in service to Christian faith. In order to "doubt wisely" we need to heed the "faith of the faithless"

[This text] covers the concepts and principles of biology from the structure and function of the cell to the organization of the biosphere. It draws upon the entire world of living things to bring out an evolutionary theme that is introduced from the start. The concept of evolution is necessary to understanding the unity and diversity of life and serves as a background for the study of ecological principles. Four chapters are devoted to reviewing the ecological principles that explain how the natural world works. Frequent references are made as to how humans impact the environment. Ecological problems are considered.

Product Description: This book considers an important and largely neglected area of Islamic law by exploring how medieval Muslim jurists resolved criminal cases that could not be proven beyond a doubt. Intisar A. Rabb calls into question a controversial popular notion about Islamic law today, which is that Islamic law is a divine legal tradition that has little room for discretion or doubt, particularly in Islamic criminal law...read more

Product Description: What entitles you to claims about your perceivable environment? Matthiessen suggests that it is neither your experience, nor the reliability of your cognitive processes, but rather your being in the right kind of perceptual situation.

Product Description: The Quicksands of Belief: The Need for Skepticism draws on history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences in an accessible, non-academic style in order to argue that humans don’t question enough. Instead, uncritically accepting the often absurd beliefs swirling around them, too many lack the skepticism needed to avoid global disaster...read more

Product Description: While excavating fossils in the tropics of Australia with a celebrity creationist, Will Storr asked himself a simple question. Why don’t facts work? Why, that is, did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and a six-thousand-year-old Earth, in spite of the evidence against them? It was the start of a journey that would lead Storr all over the world―from Texas to Warsaw to the Outer Hebrides―meeting an extraordinary cast of modern heretics whom he tries his best to understand...read more

Product Description: The book applies a unique mix of psychosocial methods to understand the complexity of emotional, cognitive and ideological responses to human rights violations and examines the banal quality of the everyday vocabularies that people use to make sense of human rights and their violations, and justify not intervening...read more

Product Description: In their recent book "The Silent God," Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor presented a provocative view on the concept of divine silence in ancient Israel. In their view, divine silence can be explained as an answer to a variety of circumstances...read more

Product Description: It may seem as if the concept of faith has become a line in the sand: you either have it or you don’t; that you are either certain or you are lost. But as author Kyle Cupp has learned, we can have an uncertain faith while still being confident in and committed to our belief in God...read more