Mary Poplin 
Is Reality Secular? [EPUB ebook] 
Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews

What is the nature of reality?At the root of our society's deepest political and cultural divisions are the conflicting principles of four global worldviews. While each of us holds to some version of one of these worldviews, we are often unconscious of their differences as well as their underlying assumptions. Mary Poplin argues that the ultimate test of a worldview, philosophy or ideology is whether it corresponds with reality. Since different perspectives conflict with each other, how do we make sense of the differences? And if a worldview system accurately reflects reality, what implications does that have for our thinking and living?In this wide-ranging and perceptive study, Poplin examines four major worldviews: naturalism, humanism, pantheism and Judeo-Christian theism. She explores the fundamental assumptions of each, pressing for limitations. Ultimately she puts each perspective to the test, asking, what if this worldview is true? If reality is secular, that means something for how we orient our lives. But if reality is not best explained by secular perspectives, that would mean something quite different. Consider for yourself what is the fundamental substance of reality.

Tabella dei contenuti

Foreword by Dallas Willard
Part 1: Is Reality Secular?
1 Truth and Consequences
2 Confessions of a Professor
3 Worldviews as Operating Systems of the Mind
4 Tracing History up to Now
Part 2: Material Naturalism
5 Everything Is a Thing
6 Science as the Only Truth
7 The Purposeless Universe Emerged from Nothing
8 No Miracles Allowed
9 The Ethics of Things upon Things
10 Countering God as Creator
Part 3: Secular Humanism
11 Man Makes Himself and His World
12 Radical Individual Freedom
13 Varieties of Secular Humanism
14 Principles of Secular and Christian Psychology
15 Finding Moral Truth in Human Dialogue
16 Exorcising Sin
17 Contesting Jesus as Divine
Part 4: Pantheism
18 Immanence – The Spirit Within Us
19 To Eliminate Suffering, Jettison Desire
20 Pantheism?s Many Faces
21 Western Pantheism – Spiritual, Not Religious
22 Spiritual Transactions in People, Nature and Nations
23 Contesting the Holy Spirit
Part 5: What If Judeo-Christianity Is True?
24 A Wider Rationality
25 The Triune God
26 Jesus, Perfect God/Man: Redeemer of Man and the World
27 Signposts of Reality
Acknowledgments
Notes
Name Index
Subject Index

Circa l’autore

Dallas Willard is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He is the author of such books as The Divine Conspiracy, Renovation of the Heart and Hearing God.