Catalog Search Results
Author
Pub. Date
[2018]
Description
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the headlines and prophecies of doom and instead follow the data. In seventy-five graphs, he posits that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction...
Author
Pub. Date
[2010]
Description
The author describes how things are getting better and explains why. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everyone else. The habit of exchange and specialization--which started more than 100,000 years ago--has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair. It covers the entire sweep of human history from the Stone Age to the...
Author
Pub. Date
2010.
Description
How can confusing directions actually help us? Why can large bonuses make CEOs less productive? Why is there such a big difference between what we think will make us happy and what really makes us happy? In his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality, he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality...
Author
Pub. Date
[2022]
Description
"For millennia, we have viewed thinking and feeling as fundamentally opposed processes. According to this persistent, age-old belief, to truly live well we must marshal our logical and rational capacities to master our emotions. This perceived dichotomy lies at the heart of our historical pursuits in theology, philosophy, and psychology. But extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience, including neuroimaging and other related technologies,...
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
"Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it explain why there seems to be so much irrationality in the world, including, let's be honest, in each of us? These are the goals of Steven Pinker's follow-up to Enlightenment Now (Bill Gates's "new favorite book of all time"). Humans today are often portrayed as cavemen out of time, poised to react to a lion in the grass with a suite of biases, blind spots, fallacies, and illusions. But this, Pinker...
11) Reality
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
Reality is an investigation of the world around and inside you, seen and unseen. It explores our internal concepts of reality, the real-world reality around us and the role of a supernatural reality; both from the viewpoint of the scientist and the Christian theologian.
Reality explores how randomness is the ultimate limit of understanding in science and should be regarded, as holy to the theologian. This randomness also extends to how change, over...
Author
Pub. Date
[2019]
Description
"Looking back to the crisis of the Reformation and beyond, Unbelievers shows how, long before philosophers started to make the case for atheism, powerful cultural currents were challenging traditional faith. These tugged in different ways not only on celebrated thinkers such as Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, and Pascal, but on men and women at every level of society whose voices we hear through their diaries, letters, and court records. Ryrie traces...
Author
Description
In the End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs -- even when these beliefs inspire the worst of human atrocities. Harris argues that in the presence of weapons of mass destruction we cannot expect to survive our religious differences indefinitely. Most controversially, he...
Author
Pub. Date
c2010
Description
Elevated to celebrity by his best-selling book, psychology professor Cass Seltzer finds his relationship with a fellow theorist challenged by a former girlfriend's invitation to join her biochemistry experiment in immortality, an effort that is further complicated by his ongoing quest to understand religion.
Author
Formats
Description
An analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has created an environment dangerously hostile to reason. We live in an age when the 30-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking, and America is in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous administration in sharing the truth with the citizenry. Of even greater concern is this administration's disinterest in...
Author
Pub. Date
20221108
Description
Believe for It: Passing on Faith to the Next Generation beautifully recounts the pivotal experiences in CeCe's life that have shaped her faith. From her childhood in Detroit and the miracle of motherhood to her award-winning music career, CeCe brings readers along for a story full of heart, passion, and wisdom acquired from her walk with God.
The Grammy award-winning artist shares stories of her life and career and lessons she's learned along the...
Author
Pub. Date
2014.
Description
In this surprising book, Eyal Winter asks a simple question: why do we have emotions? If they lead to such bad decisions, why hasn���t evolution long since made emotions irrelevant? The answer is that, even though they may not behave in a purely logical manner, our emotions frequently lead us to better, safer, more optimal outcomes.