Deus Ex Machina Sapiens

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Deus Ex Machina Sapiens

Author : David Ellis
Publisher : Elysian Detroit
ISBN 13 : 0615401368
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (154 download)

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Book Synopsis Deus Ex Machina Sapiens by : David Ellis

Download or read book Deus Ex Machina Sapiens written by David Ellis and published by Elysian Detroit. This book was released on 2011 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Watson's win on Jeopardy came as no surprise to those who had read Deus ex Machina sapiens. It was written largely during the 1990s, around the time that another IBM supercomputer--Deep Blue--was trouncing world chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. The book has since been updated on a few points of detail but its primary message remains intact: the Machine is rapidly evolving as Man's rival if not replacement for the job of Steward of the Earth. Building upon the work of some of the world's greatest scientists, philosophers, and religious thinkers, and drawing particularly from developments in the computing and cognitive sciences--particularly, the field of artificial intelligence, or AI--the book reveals the evolutionary emergence of a machine that is not just intelligent but also self-conscious, emotional, and free-willed. In the 1980s and '90s you used to hear grandiose claims about AI. Machines would soon surpass humans in intelligence, it was claimed by some. The Japanese government spent a billion dollars on one project to make it happen. Well, it didn't happen, but that didn't stop the development of intelligence in machines. AI research simply went underground, and has ever since been quietly incorporated into the "ordinary" programs we use every day, without fanfare, without hype. There is still no machine that rivals Homo sapiens in overall intelligence, but today there are machines that far exceed human intellectual capacity in specific domains, from games to engineering to art, and the number of domains is growing exponentially big and exponentially fast. The disappearance of AI from front stage was good insofar as it allowed machines to develop in the right way; that is, through an evolutionary process, which is the only way for something of such complexity to develop. But it was bad insofar as we lost sight of the development of the intelligent machine. Deus brings Machina sapiens back to front stage, where it belongs. After describing the evolutionary development of intelligence in machines it goes on to describe the emotional, intellectual, and ethical attributes of what is no less than an emergent new life form. It asks the Big Question that can only be asked if you accept the very possibility of the new life form: Will it be serpent or savior? The question is answered in the book's title, which is intended to mean "God Emerging From the Intelligent Machine." The author confesses to having never studied Latin and to have concocted the title from two known Latin phrases: "Deus ex Machina" and "Homo sapiens." The concoction could be grammatically incorrect. The author would be pleased to be corrected.

Gaming the System

Author : David J. Gunkel
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253035759
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Gaming the System by : David J. Gunkel

Download or read book Gaming the System written by David J. Gunkel and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaming the System takes philosophical traditions out of the ivory tower and into the virtual worlds of video games. In this book, author David J. Gunkel explores how philosophical traditions—put forth by noted thinkers such as Plato, Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, and Žižek—can help us explore and conceptualize recent developments in video games, game studies, and virtual worlds. Furthermore, Gunkel interprets computer games as doing philosophy, arguing that the game world is a medium that provides opportunities to model and explore fundamental questions about the nature of reality, personal identity, social organization, and moral conduct. By using games to investigate and innovate in the area of philosophical thinking, Gunkel shows how areas such as game governance and manufacturers' terms of service agreements actually grapple with the social contract and produce new postmodern forms of social organization that challenge existing modernist notions of politics and the nation state. In this critically engaging study, Gunkel considers virtual worlds and video games as more than just "fun and games," presenting them as sites for new and original thinking about some of the deepest questions concerning the human experience.

Artificial Intelligence

Author : Charles Jennings
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538116812
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Artificial Intelligence by : Charles Jennings

Download or read book Artificial Intelligence written by Charles Jennings and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-05-08 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-learning machines called AIs are popping up all around us. They’re real, and really important. They’re affecting our lives—as workers, consumers, investors, citizens, patients and students. AIs bring huge promise, but also existential risk. The biggest risk isn’t killer robots—it’s the renegade leaders, despots, and unrestrained hackers everywhere we should worry about. Charles Jennings’ insightful new book, Artificial Intelligence: The Rise of the Lightspeed Learners presents sides of AI most people have never even considered before. That surprises are a main product of AIs. That AI cybersecurity is much more critical than traditional IT security. That, as Vladimir Putin put it, “the country that leads in AI will control the world.” Jennings blends insights into Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and Beijing with insider AI stories, irreverent humor and strong opinions. He explores the global AI ecosystem from Cambridge to Beijing; and provides a stark assessment of AI activity in China—where he lived for two years working with senior government officials. He claims that the U.S. and China are in an AI horserace that will be the most important technology contest ever, with the outcome still very much in doubt. Consisting of stories, musings, interviews, and more, it provides a timely and accessible explanation of AI and its key issues to the general reading public.

The Nature of Things Post Truth

Author : N. Micklem
Publisher : Troubador Publishing Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1788039580
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis The Nature of Things Post Truth by : N. Micklem

Download or read book The Nature of Things Post Truth written by N. Micklem and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who am I? What do I make of it all? What am I supposed to do now? These three linked questions are fundamental to our lives as humans. Science, religion and philosophy all have something to say about these questions, but they don’t all say the same thing. They don’t even agree about the nature of a human being. The Nature of Things Post Truth looks at each of these questions in turn and then considers the question whether the saying ‘exercise your gift for others’ might be a practical answer to the question, what am I supposed to do now? And points out how it differs from the rule of thumb 'do as you would be done by' commonly used in Christian and other circles as the basis of how we should live our lives. The human race lives in anxious times -- hunger and cruelty and fear always in the news, sometimes close to home. The author takes this as read and gives as a bird’s eye view: it is greed that makes the world go round. Greed and envy. It is not just the money. There are some things which are frequently thought, but never mentioned: too many people trying to live in the world; too many living too long for their own good; religions falling down on the job. This book is about questions which trouble humans from their early teenage years. It is about religion but it is about a great deal more than religion. It encompasses religion and philosophy, and science, especially neuroscience. It is a book for religious persons with minds ajar to the evidence that evolution actually happened, and is happening still.

Making the Human Mind

Author : R. A. Sharpe
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134945949
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (349 download)

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Book Synopsis Making the Human Mind by : R. A. Sharpe

Download or read book Making the Human Mind written by R. A. Sharpe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Making the Human Mind" is an attack on the widespread assumption that the mind has parts and that it is the interaction between these parts which accounts for some of the most characteristic human behaviour, the sorts of irrational behaviour displayed in self-deception and weakness of will. The implications of this attack are considerable: Professor Sharpe contests a realism about the mind, the belief that there is an inventory which an all-seeing deity could compile and which could contain answers to all the questions we could ask about people. With this goes a hermeneutic approach to the understanding of human behaviour: these forms of understanding are markedly different from that suggested by the scientific model and favoured by those who partition the mind. Finally, the author undermines eliminative materialism and the idea that the way we talk about the mind constitutes a "folk psychology", arguing that what is distinctively human about the human mind has been created by self-consciousness and is self-created.

Apocalypse TV

Author : Michael G. Cornelius
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476639965
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Apocalypse TV by : Michael G. Cornelius

Download or read book Apocalypse TV written by Michael G. Cornelius and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-03-27 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The end of the world may be upon us, but it certainly is taking its sweet time playing out. The walkers on The Walking Dead have been "walking" for nearly a decade. There are now dozens of apocalyptic television shows and we use the "end times" to describe everything from domestic politics and international conflict, to the weather and our views of the future. This collection of new essays asks what it means to live in a world inundated with representations of the apocalypse. Focusing on such series as The Walking Dead, The Strain, Battlestar Galactica, Doomsday Preppers, Westworld, The Handmaid's Tale, they explore how the serialization of the end of the world allows for a closer examination of the disintegration of humanity--while it happens. Do these shows prepare us for what is to come? Do they spur us to action? Might they even be causing the apocalypse?

Geoengineering, Persuasion, and the Climate Crisis

Author : Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder
Publisher : University of Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 081732142X
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis Geoengineering, Persuasion, and the Climate Crisis by : Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder

Download or read book Geoengineering, Persuasion, and the Climate Crisis written by Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2022-12-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rhetorical exploration of an underexamined side of climate change—the ongoing research into and development of geoengineering strategies Geoengineering, Persuasion, and the Climate Crisis: A Geologic Rhetoric exposes the deeply worrying state of discourse over geoengineering—the intentional manipulation of the earth’s climate as means to halt or reverse global warming. These climate-altering projects, which range from cloud-whitening to carbon dioxide removal and from stratospheric aerosol injection to enhanced weathering, are all technological solutions to more complex geosocial problems. Geoengineering represents one of the most alarming forms of deliberative discourse in the twenty-first century. Yet geoengineering could easily generate as much harm as the environmental traumas it seeks to cure. Complicating these deliberations is the scarcity of public discussion. Most deliberations transpire within policy groups, behind the closed doors of climate-oriented startups, between subject-matter experts at scientific conferences, or in the disciplinary jargon of research journals. Further, much of this conversation occurs primarily in the West. Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder makes clear how the deliberative rhetorical strategies coming from geoengineering advocates have been largely deceptive, hegemonic, deterministic, and exploitative. In this volume, he investigates how geoengineering proponents marshal geologic actors into their arguments—and how current discourse could lead to a greater exploitation of the earth in the future. Pflugfelder’s goal is to understand the structure, content, purpose, and effect of these discourses, raise the alarm about their deliberative directions, and help us rethink our approach to the climate. In highlighting both the inherent problems of the discourses and the ways geologic rhetoric can be made productive, he attempts to give “the geologic” a place at the table to better understand the roles that all earth systems continue to play in our lives, now and for years to come.

The SAGE Handbook of Human–Machine Communication

Author : Andrea L. Guzman
Publisher : SAGE
ISBN 13 : 1529786746
Total Pages : 1019 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (297 download)

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Book Synopsis The SAGE Handbook of Human–Machine Communication by : Andrea L. Guzman

Download or read book The SAGE Handbook of Human–Machine Communication written by Andrea L. Guzman and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2023-06-01 with total page 1019 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The SAGE Handbook of Human-Machine Communication has been designed to serve as the touchstone text for researchers and scholars engaging in new research in this fast-developing field. Chapters provide a comprehensive grounding of the history, methods, debates and theories that contribute to the study of human-machine communication. Further to this, the Handbook provides a point of departure for theorizing interactions between people and technologies that are functioning in the role of communicators, and for considering the theoretical and methodological implications of machines performing traditionally ‘human’ roles. This makes the Handbook the first of its kind, and a valuable resource for students and scholars across areas such as communication, media and information studies, and computer science, as well as for practitioners, engineers and researchers interested in the foundational elements of this emerging field. Part 1: Histories and Trajectories Part 2: Approaches and Methods Part 3: Concepts and Contexts Part 4: Technologies and Applications

Being-in-Christ and Putting Death in Its Place

Author : Miles Richardson
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807132047
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Being-in-Christ and Putting Death in Its Place by : Miles Richardson

Download or read book Being-in-Christ and Putting Death in Its Place written by Miles Richardson and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the James Mooney Award of the Southern Anthropological Society In this bracingly original anthropological study, Miles Richardson draws on forty years of empirical research to explore the paradox that while humans must die like all evolving life forms, they have adapted a unique symbolic communication that makes them aware of their naturally occurring fate; and through word and artifact, they dwell upon that discovery. Using the concepts of culture and place, he illuminates how two groups, Catholics in Spanish America and Baptists in the American South, create “being-in-Christ” and thereby “put death in its place.” The book combines biological, cultural, archaeological, and linguistic anthropology; a rigorous evolutionary framework; and a postmodern dialogic stance to view humanity as inescapably a product of nature without sacrificing the interpretative social constructions that “turn a primate into a poem.” Hard-won ethnographic detail and moving religious insight make this an enthralling work.

The Non-local Universe

Author : Robert Nadeau
Publisher : New Physics and Matters of the
ISBN 13 : 9780195144086
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis The Non-local Universe by : Robert Nadeau

Download or read book The Non-local Universe written by Robert Nadeau and published by New Physics and Matters of the. This book was released on 2001 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical physics states that physical reality is local--a point in space cannot influence another point beyond a relatively short distance. However, In 1997, experiments were conducted in which light particles (photons) originated under certain conditions and traveled in opposite directions to detectors located about seven miles apart. The amazing results indicated that the photons "interacted" or "communicated" with one another instantly or "in no time." Since a distance of seven miles is quite vast in quantum physics, this led physicists to an extraordinary conclusion--even if experiments could somehow be conducted in which the distance between the detectors was half-way across the known universe, the results would indicate that interaction or communication between the photons would be instantaneous. What was revealed in these little-known experiments in 1997 is that physical reality is non-local--a discovery that Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos view as "the most momentous in the history of science." In The Non-Local Universe, Nadeau and Kafatos offer a revolutionary look at the breathtaking implications of non-locality. They argue that since every particle in the universe has been "entangled" with other particles like the two photons in the 1997 experiments, physical reality on the most basic level is an undivided wholeness. In addition to demonstrating that physical processes are vastly interdependent and interactive, they also show that more complex systems in both physics and biology display emergent properties and/or behaviors that cannot be explained in the terms of the sum of parts. One of the most startling implications of non-locality in human terms, claim the authors, is that there is no longer any basis for believing in the stark division between mind and world that has preoccupied much of western thought since the seventeenth century. And they also make a convincing case that human consciousness can now be viewed as emergent from and seamlessly connected with the entire cosmos. In pursuing this groundbreaking argument, the authors not only provide a fascinating history of developments that led to the discovery of non-locality and the sometimes heated debate between the great scientists responsible for these discoveries. They also argue that advances in scientific knowledge have further eroded the boundaries between physics and biology, and that recent studies on the evolution of the human brain suggest that the logical foundations of mathematics and ordinary language are much more similar than we previously imagined. What this new knowledge reveals, the authors conclude, is that the connection between mind and nature is far more intimate than we previously dared to imagine. What they offer is a revolutionary look at the implications of non-locality, implications that reach deep into that most intimate aspect of humanity--consciousness.

The Maya of Modernism

Author : Jesse Lerner
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780826349811
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (498 download)

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Book Synopsis The Maya of Modernism by : Jesse Lerner

Download or read book The Maya of Modernism written by Jesse Lerner and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the time when archaeologists first began to discover the civilization's spectacular ruins, Mexico's Mayan past has been a boundless source of inspiration, ideas, and iconography for the modernist imagination. This study examines the ways artists, architects, filmmakers, photographers, and other producers of visual culture in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and beyond have mined Mayan history and imagery. Beginning his study in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first mechanically reproduced and mass distributed images of the Mayan ruins, and ending with recent works that address this history of representation, Lerner argues that Maya modernism is the product of an ongoing pan-American modernism characterized by a continuing series of reinterpretations, collaborations, and exchanges in which Yucatecans, Mexicans and foreigners, mestizos, Mayas, and others all participate and are free to endorse, misunderstand, reinterpret, or reject each other's ideas.

In Search of Universal Grammar

Author : Terje Lohndal
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027272433
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis In Search of Universal Grammar by : Terje Lohndal

Download or read book In Search of Universal Grammar written by Terje Lohndal and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in honor of Jan Terje Faarlund covers the areas in which he has contributed to linguistic theorizing, ranging from in-depth studies of Norwegian and Scandinavian grammar both synchronically and diachronically, to work on the Indian language Chiapas Zoque. The book is organized thematically with two chapters on each topic: The grammar of the Scandinavian languages (Tor A. Åfarli and Christer Platzack); language policies and sociolinguistics (Unn Røyneland and Peter Trudgill); French (Hans Petter Helland and Christine Meklenborg Salvesen); language change (Werner Abraham and Elly van Gelderen); lesser-studied languages (Alice Harris and Jerry Sadock); language acquisition (David Lightfoot and Marit Westergaard); and language evolution (Erika Hagelberg and Salikoko Mufwene). This book will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from students to scholars working on any of the areas covered.

Sacrifice Imagined

Author : Douglas Hedley
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1441110038
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis Sacrifice Imagined by : Douglas Hedley

Download or read book Sacrifice Imagined written by Douglas Hedley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-09-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacrifice Imagined is an original exploration of the idea of sacrifice by one of the world's preeminent philosophers of religion. Despisers of religion have poured scorn upon the idea of sacrifice as an index of the irrational and wicked in religious practice. Nor does its secularised form seem much more appealing. One need only think of the appalling cult of sacrifice in numerous totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Yet sacrifice remains a part of our cultural and intellectual 'imaginary'. Hedley proposes good reasons to think that issues of global conflict and the ecological crisis highlight the continuing relevance of the topic of sacrifice for contemporary culture. The subject of sacrifice has been decisively influenced by two books: Girard's The Violence and the Sacred and Burkert's Homo Necans. Both of these are theories of sacrifice as violence. Hedley's book challenges both of these highly influential theories and presents a theory of sacrifice as renunciation of the will. His guiding influences in this are the much misunderstood Joseph de Maistre and the Cambridge Platonists.

Brill's Companion to Horace

Author : Hans-Christian Günther
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004241965
Total Pages : 646 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Brill's Companion to Horace by : Hans-Christian Günther

Download or read book Brill's Companion to Horace written by Hans-Christian Günther and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume centres on a detailed analysis of the whole corpus of Horace’s work by Edward Courtney (Satires), Elaine Fantham (Epistles I and Odes IV), Hans-Christian Günther (Epodes, Odes I – III, Carmen Saeculare and Epistles II) and Tobias Reinhardt (Ars Poetica). The latter is preceeded by a detailed account of Horace’s life and work in general by H.-C. Günther. Two appendices on the transmission of the text (E. Courtney) and style and metre (Peter Knox) conclude the volume. It is aimed at students and scholars of classical and modern literature who seek comprehensive orientation on all aspects of Horace’s work. All quotations from Latin and Greek are translated.

Human Rights

Author : Brigitte Buchhammer
Publisher : LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN 13 : 3643912137
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (439 download)

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Book Synopsis Human Rights by : Brigitte Buchhammer

Download or read book Human Rights written by Brigitte Buchhammer and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume thirteen essays highlight the subject of human rights from different points of view. The guiding questions include the following: Can feminists and gender researchers ground their commitment to greater gender justice in human rights? Is there a single concept of human rights? Do human rights include individual rights or group rights? Are the demands of human rights addressed to institutions or to individuals? Is there an intrinsic moment of Eurocentrism within human rights? Are human rights a moral or legal measure, or somewhere in between? Who is recognized as a human being?

All These Worlds

Author : Dennis E. Taylor
Publisher : Worldbuilders Press
ISBN 13 : 9781680680607
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (86 download)

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Book Synopsis All These Worlds by : Dennis E. Taylor

Download or read book All These Worlds written by Dennis E. Taylor and published by Worldbuilders Press. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bobiverse fans: a signed limited edition of all three books in a boxed set, signed by the author, is now available on Amazon. Look for The Bobiverse [Signed Limited Edition] on Amazon Being a sentient spaceship really should be more fun. But after spreading out through space for almost a century, Bob and his clones just can't stay out of trouble. They've created enough colonies so humanity shouldn't go extinct. But political squabbles have a bad habit of dying hard, and the Brazilian probes are still trying to take out the competition. And the Bobs have picked a fight with an older, more powerful species with a large appetite and a short temper. Still stinging from getting their collective butts kicked in their first encounter with the Others, the Bobs now face the prospect of a decisive final battle to defend Earth and its colonies. But the Bobs are less disciplined than a herd of cats, and some of the younger copies are more concerned with their own local problems than defeating the Others. Yet salvation may come from an unlikely source. A couple of eighth-generation Bobs have found something out in deep space. All it will take to save the Earth and perhaps all of humanity is for them to get it to Sol - unless the Others arrive first.

Religion and the Challenges of Science

Author : William Sweet
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351150383
Total Pages : 387 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (511 download)

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Book Synopsis Religion and the Challenges of Science by : William Sweet

Download or read book Religion and the Challenges of Science written by William Sweet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does science pose a challenge to religion and religious belief? This question has been a matter of long-standing debate - and it continues to concern not only scholars in philosophy, theology, and the sciences, but also those involved in public educational policy. This volume provides background to the current 'science and religion' debate, yet focuses as well on themes where recent discussion of the relation between science and religion has been particularly concentrated. The first theme deals with the history of the interrelation of science and religion. The second and third themes deal with the implications of recent work in cosmology, biology and so-called intelligent design for religion and religious belief. The fourth theme is concerned with 'conceptual issues' underlying, or implied, in the current debates, such as: Are scientific naturalism and religion compatible? Are science and religion bodies of knowledge or practices or both? Do religion and science offer conflicting truth claims? By illuminating contemporary discussion in the science-religion debate and by outlining the options available in describing the relation between the two, this volume will be of interest to scholars and to members of the educated public alike.