Attempting to prove the existence of God is an ancient and venerable tradition within the discipline known as the philosophy of religion. But can we... truly prove the existence of God using human reason alone? Just how do we prove the existence of God? Why try? Which, if any, of the various theistic proofs are persuasive? God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs tackles these fundamental questions head-on. / Stephen T. Davis examines a cross-section of theistic proofs that have been offered by theologians and thinkers from Anselm to Paley, explaining in clear terms what theistic proofs are and what they try to accomplish. He then goes on to explore in depth the relationship between theistic proofs and religious realism, the ontological argument for the existence of God, the cosmological and teleological arguments, the position known as foundationalism, and the argument from religious experience. / Wisely structured and clearly written, this volume will make an excellent resource for those looking for a comprehensive introduction to the debate surrounding the existence of God, or for those seeking intellectual validation for their faith.

When a loved one dies, somebody inevitably says the death was God's will. The same claim is made when a person is cured of cancer. In a war, both sides... often argue that they are carrying out God's will. Faithful people search for God's will for their lives, especially when they are faced with a decision, such as which job to take or whether to have another child. What is meant by God's will? How does God act? What is the character of the God whose will is expressed in and through our lives? This book answers these questions in relation to a broadly Christian perspective.Based on the traditional premise that everything we assert about God is metaphorical, this wonderfully written book presents a range of ways to imagine the nature of God and of God's power and will: from a personal but distant God who is fully in charge and in control, through more gentle and engaged images of God, and ultimately to a non-personal view of God as the energy for life in the universe. Each perspective offers distinct images for God and for the way in which God's will operates; each is assessed for its strengths and weaknesses. With deep insight and clear, inspiring writing, Keshgegian ultimately offers a way to imagine God and power that redefines the whole idea of God's will.

Frederick Buechner's Godric "retells the life of Godric of Finchale, a twelfth-century English holy man whose projects late in life included that of... purifying his moral ambition of pride...Sin, spiritual yearning, rebirth, fierce asceticism--these hagiographic staples aren't easy to revitalize but Frederick Buechner goes at the task with intelligent intensity and a fine readiness to invent what history doesn't supply. He contrives a style of speech for his narrator--Godric himself--that's brisk and tough-sinewed...He avoids metaphysical fiddle, embedding his narrative in domestic reality--familiar affection, responsibilities, disasters...All on his own, Mr. Buechner has managed to reinvent projects of self-purification and of faith as piquant matter for contemporary fiction [in a book] notable for literary finish...Frederick Buechner is a very good writer indeed." -- Benjamin DeMott, The New York Times Book Review "From the book's opening sentence...and sensible reader will be caught in Godric's grip...Godric glimmers brightly." -- Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek "Godric is a memorable book...a marvelous gem of a book...destined to become a classic of its kind." -- Michael Heskett, Houston Chronicle "In the extraordinary figure of Godric, both stubborn outsider and true child of God, both worldly and unworldly, Frederick Buechner has found an ideal means of exploring the nature of spirituality. Godric is a living battleground where God fights it out with the world, the Flesh, and the Devil." -- London Times Literary Supplement "Wityh a poet's sensibly and a high reverent fancy, Frederick Buechner paints a memorable portrait." -- Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal

Throughout the Civil War, soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict saw the hand of God in the terrible events of the day, but the standard... narratives of the period pay scant attention to religion. Now, in God's Almost Chosen Peoples, Lincoln Prize-winning historian George C. Rable offers a groundbreaking account of how Americans of all political and religious persuasions used faith to interpret the course of the war.Examining a wide range of published and unpublished documents--including sermons, official statements from various churches, denominational papers and periodicals, and letters, diaries, and newspaper articles--Rable illuminates the broad role of religion during the Civil War, giving attention to often-neglected groups such as Mormons, Catholics, blacks, and people from the Trans-Mississippi region. The book underscores religion's presence in the everyday lives of Americans north and south struggling to understand the meaning of the conflict, from the tragedy of individual death to victory and defeat in battle and even the ultimate outcome of the war. Rable shows that themes of providence, sin, and judgment pervaded both public and private writings about the conflict. Perhaps most important, this volume--the only comprehensive religious history of the war--highlights the resilience of religious faith in the face of political and military storms the likes of which Americans had never before endured.

The acknowledged master of Greek comedy, Aristophanes brilliantly combines serious political satire with bawdiness, pyrotechnical bombast with delicate... lyrics. "Frogs and Other Plays" features his four most celebrated masterpieces: THE CLOUDS, THE BIRDS, LYSISTRATA, and THE FROGS. This edition features wonderful translations of "The Clouds", "The Birds", "Lysistrata", and "The Frogs". "Frogs and Other Plays " includes THE FROGS: Visiting the underworld, the god Dionysus seeks the counsel of the dead tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides on how to bring good writing back to Athens. A fierce debate - full of scathing insults and literary satire - ensues between the two dramatists. THE CLOUDS: The most controversial of Aristophanes' plays, it is a brilliant caricature of the philosopher Socrates, seen as a wily sophist who teaches men to cheat through cunning argument. THE BIRDS: This portrayal of a flawed utopia called Cloudcuckooland is an enchanting escape into the world of free-flying fantasy that explores the eternal dilemmas of man on earth. LYSISTRATA: In the twenty-first year of the Peloponnesian War, the women of Athens and Sparta, tired of the incessant fighting between their men, resolve to withhold sex from their husbands until peace is settled.

Bruce Lincoln is one of the most prominent advocates within religious studies for an uncompromisingly critical approach to the phenomenon of... religion—historians of religions, he believes, should resist the preferred narratives and self-understanding of religions themselves, especially when their stories are endowed with sacred origins and authority. In Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars, Lincoln assembles a collection of essays that both illustrates and reveals the benefits of his methodology, making a case for a critical religious studies that starts with skepticism but is neither cynical nor crude.The book begins with Lincoln’s “Theses on Method” and ends with “The (Un)discipline of Religious Studies,” in which he unsparingly considers the failings of uncritical and nonhistorical approaches to the study of religions. In between, Lincoln presents new examinations of problems in ancient religions and relates these cases to larger comparative themes. While bringing to light important features of the formation of pantheons and the constructions of demons, chaos, and the dead, Lincoln demonstrates that historians of religions should take religious things—inspired scriptures, sacred centers, salvific rites, communities graced by divine favor—as the theories of interested humans that shape perception, community, and experiences. As he shows, it is for their terrestrial influence, and not their sacred origins, that religious phenomena merit consideration by the historian. Tackling many questions central to religious study, Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars will be a touchstone for the history of religions in the twenty-first century.

Gods and Heroes in Art aims to help museum patrons and art lovers recognize the legendary characters of classical antiquity in art. The characters are... each described in entries summarizing their distinctive stories, their special attributes, and the ways in which artists have depicted them. Each entry is richly illustrated with reproductions of works of art in which the god or hero is pictured, giving readers a chance to examine images of the character and to understand the work of art better.

In their wide-ranging interpretation of the religion of ancient Egypt, Françoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche explore how, over a period of... roughly 3500 years, the Egyptians conceptualized their relations with the gods. Drawing on the insights of anthropology, the authors discuss such topics as the identities, images, and functions of the gods; rituals and liturgies; personal forms of piety expressing humanity's need to establish a direct relation with the divine; and the afterlife, a central feature of Egyptian religion. That religion, the authors assert, was characterized by the remarkable continuity of its ritual practices and the ideas of which they were an expression.Throughout, Dunand and Zivie-Coche take advantage of the most recent archaeological discoveries and scholarship. Gods and Men in Egypt is unique in its coverage of Egyptian religious expression in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Written with nonspecialist readers in mind, it is largely concerned with the continuation of Egypt's traditional religion in these periods, but it also includes fascinating accounts of Judaism in Egypt and the appearance and spread of Christianity there.

In 1957, a handsome gardener named Clayton Boone is hired by James Whale, the director of Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man.... Boone is fascinated by his retired employer's tales of Old Hollywood, but also wary of his overt homosexuality. Whale slowly exposes Boone to a world he's never before seen, while staging a plot with the young man at its center—not a plot of seduction, but something darker. Gods and Monsters, the Academy Award®-winning screenplay by Bill Condon, is adapted from the novel Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram. The film, directed by Condon, stars Ian McKellen as Whale, Brendan Fraser as Boone, and Lynn Redgrave as Hanna, Whale's protective housekeeper. Gods and Monsters, produced by Regent Entertainment, was named Best Picture by the National Board of Review, was chosen by more than 100 newspapers and magazines as one of the Ten Best Films of 1998, and was nominated for three Academy® Awards. "Gods and Monsters is a picture that seems so very simple in its outline, yet it elicits from its audiences immensely complex feelings. That's a rare balance and extraordinarily difficult to achieve," writes Clive Barker in his foreword. And Ian McKellen writes in his introduction, "This is one of those rare screenplays that the actors felt no need to tamper with. The dialogue is full of invention but never straining for effect." This volume in the acclaimed Newmarket Shooting Script® series features Condon's screenplay, McKellen's introduction, Barker's foreword, a portfolio of stills by Anne Fishbein, and complete credits for the film.

For centuries, poets have looked into the mirror of classical myth to show us the many ways our emotional lives are still reflected in the ancient... stories of heroism, hubris, transformation, and loss that myths so eloquently tell. Now, in Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths, we have the first anthology to gather the great 20th century myth-inspired poems from around the world. "Perhaps it is because the myths echo the structure of our unconscious that every new generation of poets finds them a source of inspiration and self-recognition," says Nina Kossman in her introduction to this marvelous collection. Indeed, from Valery, Yeats, Lawrence, Rilke, Akhmatova, and Auden writing in the first half of the century to such contemporary poets as Lucille Clifton, Derek Walcott, Rita Dove, Wislawa Szymborska, and Mark Strand, the material of Greek myth has elicited a poetry of remarkably high achievement. And by organizing the poems first into broad categories such as "Heroes," "Lovers," "Trespassers," and secondly around particular mythological figures such as Persephone, Orpheus, or Narcissus, readers are treated to a fascinating spectrum of poems on the same subject. For example, the section on Odysseus includes poems by Cavafy, W. S. Merwin, Gregory Corso, Gabriel Zaid, Louise Gluck, Wallace Stevens, and many others. Thus we are allowed to see the familiar Greek hero refracted through the eyes, and sharply varying stylistic approaches, of a wide range of poets from around the world. Here, then, is a collection of extraordinary poems that testifies to--and amply rewards--our ongoing fascination with classical myth.

Robert Armour's classic text, long cherished by a generation of readers, is now complemented with more than 50 new photographs and line drawings that... show the gods and goddesses in their characteristic forms. Armour maintains a strong narrative thread with illuminating commentary in his lively, vigorous retelling of stories from Egyptian mythology, including those of the sun god Ra, the tragic death and rebirth of Osiris with the help of Isis, the near-burlesque of Horus' battle with the evil Seth, and the 'gods of the intellect' Thoth and Maat. Now with an updated bibliography and glossary as well as new charts showing the gods at a glance and ancient Egyptian chronology in brief, this book is sure to inform and enchant a new generation of readers.

This title surveys the pre-Christian beliefs of the Scandinavian and Germanic people. It provides an introduction to this subject, giving basic outlines... to the sagas and stories, and helps identify the character traits of not only the well known but also the lesser gods of the age.

A one-of-a-kind collection showcasing the energy of new African literatureComing at a time when Africa and African writers are in the midst of a... remarkable renaissance, Gods and Soldiers captures the vitality and urgency of African writing today. With stories from northern Arabic-speaking to southern Zulu-speaking writers, this collection conveys thirty different ways of approaching what it means to be African. Whether about life in the new urban melting pots of Cape Town and Luanda, or amid the battlefield chaos of Zimbabwe and Somalia, or set in the imaginary surreal landscapes born out of the oral storytelling tradition, these stories represent a striking cross section of extraordinary writing. Including works by J. M. Coetzee, Chimamanda Adichie, Nuruddin Farah, Binyavanga Wainaina, and Chinua Achebe, and edited by Rob Spillman of Tin House magazine, Gods and Soldiers features many pieces never before published, making it a vibrant and essential glimpse of Africa as it enters the twenty-first century.

When Nathan Wachtel, the distinguished historical anthropologist, returned to the village of Chipaya, the site of his extensive fieldwork in the... Bolivian Andes, he learned a group of Uru Indians was being incarcerated and tortured for no apparent reason. Even more strangely, no one—not even his closest informant and friend—would speak about it.Wachtel discovered that a series of recent deaths and misfortunes in Chipaya had been attributed to the evil powers of the Urus, a group usually regarded with suspicion by the other ethnic groups. Those incarcerated were believed to be the chief sorcerers and vampires whose paganistic practices had brought death to Chipaya by upsetting the social order. Wachtel's investigation, told in Gods and Vampires: Back to Chipaya, reveals much about relations between the Urus and the region's dominant ethnic groups and confronts some of the most trenchant issues in contemporary anthropology. His analysis shows that the Urus had become victims of the same set of ideals the Spanish had used, centuries before, to establish their hegemony in the region.Presented as a personal detective story, Gods and Vampires is Wachtel's latest work in a series studying the ongoing impact of the Spanish conquest on the Andean consciousness and social system. Its insight into Bolivian society and the legacy of hegemony confronts some of the most trenchant issues in contemporary anthropologyand will be of great interest to scholars of anthropology, Latin American studies, and Native American studies.