According to anthropologists, religion arose in the Neolithic period, a time that began 12 thousand years ago when people abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and started settling down in communities. By the time of the ancient Egyptians, religion had reached a significant level of development. The spirits of the seeds and the weather had evolved into gods. In the end, the gods numbered more than a thousand; every god required a temple, and every temple needed a priest, or several of them. Following the death of Jesus, for the Christian god to reach its final form took an additional three hundred years. It was accomplished through the work of dozens of bishops who wrestled with the problem of how a god consisting of three persons could really be one entity. Religious orthodoxy as we know it today is the result of the countless solutions proposed by priests, not the result of divinely inspired texts or teachings, with various bishops condemning some proposals as heretical and blessing others as conventional. But how were orthodoxy and heresy distinguished? Any position that increased the power of the bishops was, by definition, orthodox, and any position that undermined it was heretical. Thus, the Christian god that we have today is a construct assembled over many years, and for two thousand years it has served to augment and solidify the power of the bishops who created it and who sustain it. Religion, Power & Illusion concludes that priestly power is so firmly rooted in the human condition that religion is not likely to disappear any time soon. It also explores the defective logic used by religious promoters, and what is necessary for experiences to be non-illusory.
Unsurpassed for its clarity, conciseness, and comprehensiveness, Hurley's market-leading A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC has established itself as the standard for introductory logic classes. Hailed in the first eight editions for an unwavering commitment to lucid, focused, reader-friendly presentations of logic's basic topics, the latest edition also continues to expand upon Hurley's tradition of technological excellence with the introduction of vMentor and iLrn Logic. These two technologies help you manage the workload of teaching logic by providing your students with a live, online logic tutoring service and you with an online system that automates homework and test grading. In addition, Hurley's outstanding LEARNING LOGIC-an interactive, audio-visual recasting of the entire text-remains a free supplement with each copy of the text. Rounded out with a Book Companion Website that features student quizzing and interactive tutorials on Venn diagrams and truth tables, Hurley's A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC, Ninth Edition is not only the most logically sound choice that a professor could make for his or her logic course, but the most technologically sound choice as well. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Patrick Deeley's train journey home to rural East Galway in autumn 1978 was a pilgrimage of grief: his giant of a father had been felled, the hurley-making workshop silenced. From this moment, Patrick unfolds his childhood as a series of evocative moments, from the intricate workings of the timber workshop run by his father to the slow taking apart of an old tractor and the physical burial of a steam engine; from his mother’s steady work on an old Singer sewing machine to his father’s vertiginous quickstep on the roof of their house. There are many wonderful descriptions of the natural world and delightful cameos of characters and incidents from a not-so-long-ago country childhood. In a style reminiscent of John McGahern’s Memoir, Deeley’s beautifully paced prose captures the rhythms, struggles and rough edges of a rural life that was already dying even as he grew. This is an enchanting, beautifully written account of family, love, loss, and the unstoppable march of time.
LOGIC: THE ESSENTIALS concentrates on the fundaments of introductory logic. Practical in orientation and content, Essentials is loaded with class-tested, proven practice exercises. The book is tailored to address the needs of many of today's instructors who are challenged by time constraints but yet want to instill in their students a solid grasp of basic logical principles and the requisite skill to apply them in everyday life. This new text is based on the classic and bestselling textbook, A Concise Introduction to Logic, and nearly all of the exercises in the correlative chapters, so central to the effectiveness of that text, have been retained to ensure more than enough practice for students to master the central concepts. The text focuses largely on deductive logic, but it contains sufficient treatment of induction to provide a solid footing for informal fallacies. The result is a contemporary approach--more focused, more practical, less theoretical--built on a tradition of precise, elegant, and clear presentation of the subject matter of logic, both formal and informal. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
PORTALS: What mysteries...or horrors...await you on the other side? The lure of an open doorway is hard to resist. What lies beyond? Where will it take you—and how will you be transformed? Will it lead to paradise...or a living hell? You’ll never know, unless you have the courage to take that first step. In this anthology you will find sixteen stories of portals to exotic destinations, whether it’s a doorway in the desert that appears out of thin air, a fairy ring of mushrooms in the backyard, a crack in the road, or a train headed straight to Hell. Science fiction and fantasy authors Nancy Holzner, Esther Friesner, Ian Tregillis, Jacey Bedford, John Linwood Grant, Kate Hall, Gini Koch, Violette Malan, Juliet Kemp, James Enge, Steven Harper, F. Brett Cox, Jaime Lee Moyer, Jason Palmatier, Andrija Popovic, and Patrick Hurley invite you to step through a host of doorways to other realities with infinite possibilities, some horrible, some comic, and some just plain weird. So take my hand—not too tight!—and let’s journey into another world. The door is open. The portal awaits.
“Sprawl” is one of the ugliest words in the American political lexicon. Virtually no one wants America’s rural landscapes, farmland, and natural areas to be lost to bland, placeless malls, freeways, and subdivisions. Yet few of America’s fast-growing rural areas have effective rules to limit or contain sprawl. Oregon is one of the nation’s most celebrated exceptions. In the early 1970s Oregon established the nation’s first and only comprehensive statewide system of land-use planning and largely succeeded in confining residential and commercial growth to urban areas while preserving the state’s rural farmland, forests, and natural areas. Despite repeated political attacks, the state’s planning system remained essentially politically unscathed for three decades. In the early- and mid-2000s, however, the Oregon public appeared disenchanted, voting repeatedly in favor of statewide ballot initiatives that undermined the ability of the state to regulate growth. One of America’s most celebrated “success stories” in the war against sprawl appeared to crumble, inspiring property rights activists in numerous other western states to launch copycat ballot initiatives against land-use regulation. This is the first book to tell the story of Oregon’s unique land-use planning system from its rise in the early 1970s to its near-death experience in the first decade of the 2000s. Using participant observation and extensive original interviews with key figures on both sides of the state’s land use wars past and present, this book examines the question of how and why a planning system that was once the nation’s most visible and successful example of a comprehensive regulatory approach to preventing runaway sprawl nearly collapsed. Planning Paradise is tough love for Oregon planning. While admiring much of what the state’s planning system has accomplished, Walker and Hurley believe that scholars, professionals, activists, and citizens engaged in the battle against sprawl would be well advised to think long and deeply about the lessons that the recent struggles of one of America’s most celebrated planning systems may hold for the future of land-use planning in Oregon and beyond.
The dictionary lists each character from Pynchon's fiction up through his most recent novel, including the most likely etymology of each name. In addition, the thorough introduction examines Pynchon's character names as a part of his greater literary strategy, establishing a set of categories through which most of the names may be understood.
Unsurpassed for its clarity and comprehensiveness, A CONCISE INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC is the #1 introductory logic textbook on the market. In this 13th Edition, Patrick Hurley and new co-author Lori Watson continue to build upon the tradition of a lucid, focused, and accessible presentation of the basic subject matter of both informal and formal logic. How Logical Are You? features connect a section's content to real-life scenarios pertinent to students' lives, using everyday examples to translate new notions and terms into concepts to which readers unfamiliar with the subject matter can relate. Living Logic, a new digital activity, allows students to apply the skills they learn to a real-world problem. The text's extensive, carefully sequenced exercises guide students toward greater proficiency with the skills they are learning. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
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