Ebook {Epub PDF} Why Religion?: A Personal Story by Elaine Pagels

 · Elaine Pagels shares her life's connections with religion beginning with going to a Billy Graham crusade at the age of fifteen; she was "born again" that day. Her father, hating religion, was very angry, believing in Darwinism, and her mother just wanted to keep the peace at home.4/5. Brilliantly written, without dogma, exposition of why religion persists in the face of the onslaught of rational thinking. Dr Pagels includes the story of her own terrible personal losses to illustrate her need for finding some deeper meaning in life thru her research on Christianity. I found this book when I was most in need of it/5(). Why Religion? is a focused memoir which seeks to explain how and why Pagels was attracted to the discipline of religious studies, a very unconventional calling for a young woman coming of age in the s (and one in which she encountered a fair bit of male chauvinism). She also addresses some of the ways in which religion and a sort of mysticism have given shape and meaning to a life marked by 4/5(K).

Why Religion?: A Personal Story PDF book by Elaine Pagels Read Online or Free Download in ePUB, PDF or MOBI eBooks. Published in November 6th the book become immediate popular and critical acclaim in religion, autobiography books. Suggested PDF: Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation pdf. Elaine Pagels writes that creation stories "create the cultural world by transmitting traditional values" (52). For example, the sexual morality implicit in the Adam and Eve story can be read as promoting an ethic of procreation ("fill the whole earth") in a society in which wealth was understood in terms of livestock, chattels, wives. Pagels unpacks the relevance of religion in the twenty-first century--how religious traditions continue to shape the way we understand ourselves and the world and provide a framework for facing our most painful losses., With characteristic intelligence and wisdom, Elaine Pagels lays bare her own life-shattering losses, offering up the possibility that suffering might afford each of us.

A provocative and deeply moving account from one of the most compelling religious thinkers at work today, Why Religion? explores the spiritual dimension of human experience. WHY RELIGION? A PERSONAL STORY. By Elaine Pagels. Ecco (HarperCollins), $, pages. TOP STORIES Coronavirus spikes in 2 Midwest counties alarm feds. Pagels (Religion/Princeton Univ.; Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation, , etc.), who is especially renowned for her work studying the ancient Gnostic brand of Christianity, provides a raw and often moving autobiography. The author begins in the postwar suburbs of Palo Alto, California, where she was raised by emotionally detached, and certainly nonspiritual, parents.