Paradigm shifting stuff
928483
As a Christian and a qualified geologist and registered Professional Natural Scientist, I always had my doubts about millions of years but tilted on the side of my colleagues and lecturers because the evidence for an old earth was so plentiful.

But in Snubbing God, Dr Kuligin points out some of the evidence against an old earth as well as some of the assumptions that are necessary to maintain an old earth interpretation of the existing evidence. After reconsidering the facts, I couldn't believe that I allowed my lecturers to take such giant leaps of faith (for example, a constant radioactive decay rate).

Reading that chapter in the context of the book made me realize that an old earth view is not just a scientific theory, it is the tool that enables evolutionary theory, a theory whose sole purpose is to undermine God as creator and thus open up all social boundaries that the creator God has put on society for our benefit (submission to gender, marriage fidelity, heterosexuality etc.).

Gods call to Christians in Genesis 1 to subdue the earth behooves us all to take the time to dig into these issues of our time. This book is an excellent start for such a willing digger!

Those chapters that interested me went really quickly, and the others took a bit more work. Now, I am better equipped to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.
4168668
In this work Marcus Borg reminds me of conversations I have had with Bishop Spong: as we get older we think we are finding something no one else knew about Christianity. The new paradigm described seems the point of view of Saint Thomas if you look for it. What do you say to someone who asks if the Bible is true? Yes. If that is the kind of question they ask, then that is the best answer you can give. But as you become a scholar you begin learning what a metaphor is and you realize that all anyone could mean by "literal" is interpretation. So this new paradigm comes with age -- everyone's age. The fundamentalist seeks the concrete descriptions that they can interpret. The more educated adult sees something else, and, God willing, the old see still other things.
But this does not mean this is not wonderful Borg. I recommmend this for a beautiful restatement of an ancient way of thinking about Jesus. But I was hoping for something else. A new paradigm there should be. With everything we have learned there should be new interpretations. We have Robert Funk in "Honest To Jesus" but is that the new paradigm? What would Hegel say? It sounds like an old heresy and that is all.
We shall need to keep looking.
2280637
It's said (several times in this book) that Cosmology is living a golden time. Indeed this collection of texts mentions huge ideas and changes that came out in the last 10 or 5 years. All this progresses do not point in the same direction though. On the contrary, there are many different theories and interpretations that describe all sorts of 'realities'. It might be that we live in the only universe it exists and had existed or that multiple universes exist in parallel, or in cycles one after the other, or forming a sort of fractal, with bubbles inside bubbles (pockets) that astonishingly follow a type of evolution by selection akin to life on Earth. These descriptions are based on consequences from different theories, specially different variants of string theory, that is intensively debated in this book. with some of the authors pointing that it's the best and only possible path to continue doing physics in a deeper level, and other rejecting it completely. Two major sub-debates are important: 1. Will string theory someday contact experimental physics?, are string theory hypothesis, and some of their views, such as the 'landscape', verifiable and falsifiable? 2. Is the anthropic principle serious science? Not only theories are debated in this book but the very essence of science, of what constitutes a (valid) theory, and, very interestingly, how much philosophy can help on its progress (some authors here actually suggest that unless new philosophical ideas arrive, deep physics will get stuck).

I particularly enjoyed the chapter 14 in which Brian Greene and Paul Steinhardt have an intense discussion about the anthropic principle, string theory and the future of cosmology. They have opposite views in all these subjects, and the conversation feels like a chess game played by masters in which the lay person can only feel the intensity and grasp the boldest movements.
3741469
As a 30-something New Yorker, Ive been experiencing a shift in my attitude toward consumption these past few years. A sustained delight in returning the cable box to Time Warner; in preferring e-books that take up no space; resoling a pair of boots instead of buying a new pair; saving for a trip by eschewing taxis and new clothes for a year. I haven't had a word  much less a movement  to which I could attribute this sense of wanting my life to involve less stuff and more experience. Turns out there is a word and a movement: Stuffocation.
With a conversational approach to the capitalist system and social values, the author explains how wespecifically, gulp, Americanscame to embrace and spread the gospel of materialism. He introduces us to colorful people who have become minimalists, medium chillers, consumer-minimalists, and finally, experientialists. He weaves studies and statistics into the narrative, raising the same questions that readers are asking.
The takeaway? What constitutes a satisfying consumer transaction is indeed shifting. The future will be an experience-based economy with goods that are more environmentally considerate; less bulky; more customized; easily updated and designed for sharing; and most importantly: they will promote activities that bring us closer to others and provide us with a shareable conversational currency.
My takeaway? Wanting fewer things and more experiences has set a domino-line of change into motion. It has the potential to transform mindsets, habits, lives, societies...and it starts with you, me, us.
4448550
Great read. Much broader in content than I originally thought. It works it's way up from various ways that humanity has organized itself, to those organizational centers in the brain, and back down. Highly recommend it.
480755
This book completely changed my life yesterday when I hit Tucker's chapter on quantum theory.  I have been reading as much on quantum mechanics for the last twenty years as I could wrap my mind around. It hasn't been easy going.  I've also been reading Stevenson and a good many others on reincarnation for forty years.

It has been quite evident to me for at least thirty years that the old scientific paradigm was doing tremendous damage to our attempts at understanding reality.  The old paradigm asked me to discard tremendous amounts of my own data to maintain consistency with the materialist worldview. Discarding mounds of one's own data and that of other careful scientists, because it is inconsistent with the prevailing dogmatic worldview, whether that be "scientific" or religious, is totally inconsistent with being a devotee of truth.

After stumbling around for all these years I was starting to knit some of reality together.  I'm quite proud to say that much of what Tucker asserts I'd found to be truth myself. But my best efforts have lagged far behind what Tucker has accomplished.

Tucker has put together the best outline I have seen on how the universe and consciousness probably work.  He's hasn't completely solved the exponential puzzle. That puzzle will keep us working on it into infinity. But if you accept the complexity of reality, and greet it eagerly and thankfully, you will not be disappointed here.
2579277
I picked up this book and read it in one sitting and I'm not sure ill ever be the same. There are nuggets implanted in this book that can change everything. Simple, yet profound paradigm shifts that will breed a new sense of optimism and inspiration. So glad I took a few hours to read this, I'll keep it close from here on out!
4060361
Very cool stuff in here. Some powerful illusions, with fascinating implications for perception.
4286461
For quite some time the generation of interest for communities in general, and specifically faith communities, has been Gen Y or Millennials. Its a demographic that differs from the boomers, builders, and busters. And just when the experts think they have it figured out, we move onto a new subset of the population: Gen Z-Centennials.
Theyre younger, and they have different goals and priorities. And so, the learning curve has to start over for those who are trying to keep up. And by the way, starting now, and for the next few decades, this subset is going to figure substantially in national conversations. That means that we as community leaders, and church leaders, want to know who it is that we are leading.  In Meet Generation Z: Understanding and Reaching the New Post-Christian World, (Baker Books, 2017) James White gives us a picture of who is included in this generation, and the distinctive that separate them from previous generations.
White divides the book into 2 parts; one part addressing current realities that are facing the church in our Post-Christian world.  Here he includes some research on what we are facing in the west, and moves on to the distinctives of Gen Z, and how their thought processes are being shaped. Part 2 is what the author suggests as a response, and the author talks about being countercultural as a church.  (that seems to follow the example of Jesus---when sin entered the world things got turned upside down, Jesus was all about turning the upside-down upside-down, thus making it right-side-up)
But being counter-cultural means we have to learn the culture we want to address, so that we know how to address members of that culture, without offending them (except with Biblical Truth). Chapter 8 includes some ideas for new approaches to evangelization in this new culture.
There are also some manuscripts of 3 messages that Dr White has preached, and his sermon on gay marriage (Appendix A, p 161) is quite an eye-opener. That teaching tool in itself would be worth the price of this book for anyone struggling with how to address the issue in a loving manner, while staying true to Scripture.
White also provides discussion questions at the end of each chapter. The questions can be used for personal reflection, but small groups wanting to learn how to share the gospel would benefit, as would church leadership teams as they plan for the future of their faith community.
I received this book from Baker Books in exchange for posting a review. I was not required to post a positive review.
5/5
293934
The Divine Drama is an example of the postmodernism process.  In other words, there is a new mindset today that is gaining ground in our culture, and it is one of less statistics and more stories.  Many today do not want to be told that two plus two equals four; rather, they want to hold in their hands a grape, an apple, a pear, and an orange and have someone explain in story form how these items together come to the number four. Stories are replacing science, and fiction, too often, replaces facts.  Kurt Bruner, however, does not lose the facts of the gospel in this book, and for that I am grateful.  However, he has used the postmodern process to say what great theologians and apologists have been saying for years: however, they have used propositional truths to accomplish the same goal.  We are in a day when this sort of "postmodernism story telling" is necessary to reach a certain segment of people.  So, let's use it. Though I would certainly not put this work in the category of a C. S. Lewis, it is a fair product of the story-telling genre for those who like that sort of thing.
2114271
A paradigm shift on my thinking.  Great resource for renewing the mind.
413883
Yes, I learned something by reading this book but I found so much of it derivative from writings of the past thirty years.  Think of "The Tao of Physics,"  "The Intention Experiment," "Twelve Conditions of a Miracle," the New Age type writings such as "The Secret" which expounds on the law of attraction, and even as far back as Psycho Cybernetics where Maltz describes in the 1960's how to replace destructive thoughts with positive ones -- how to activate the "servo mechanism" by re-living success, as success breeds success.  Anybody remember "The Power of Positive Thinking?"  These are all worthy reads that have been re-hashed to some degree in this book.

That is not to say that this book is not helpful or that I did not enjoy it.  What was new and interesting to me was the part about how activating the para-sympathetic nervous system de-activates the results of the "flight or fight" syndrome that the sympathetic nervous system controls.  These insights are extremely useful to all of us, as the chemicals involved in activating these systems age the brain and can lead to arterial sclerosis.  Meditation produces dopamine and stress reduces serotonin.

I could do without the sound-bite type of presentation.  There are numerous titles, subtitles, circles, drawings, charts, redundancies, and re-caps at the end of each chapter. I found it disturbing and distracting because the material is so fragmented that I had trouble digesting it.

This book was aptly titled I thought, suggesting the integration of eastern mysticism (Buddha), and science (the brain), both fascinating subjects. The information is sound, familiar and helpful -- I simply take issue with the presentation of the materials.
1692981
Not a beginner text by any means, but a good way to delve deeper into this fascinating new programming paradigm.
865796
I currently live in Japan where I have seen the dark side of the American Cultural Machine.  Thousands of years of tradition have been swallowed up in a couple years by a dominant American system that uses insidious and  underhanded techniques to sell its products and become rich.  This is a  wonderful attack on the current dominant paradigm- Work Work Work Buy Buy  Buy(and if this continues unabated we are asking for a global environmental  nightmare).  I am not an environmentalist but this book uses solid  arguments and puts forth interesting ideas.  PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. It will  give you a chance against the mega-corporations.  Take back your mind and  free will!  This book is fun, interesting, and it could one day be seen as  the book that started the newest counter culture:  The Anti-consumer.
4027219
Not so modern anymore, some good suggestions.
1681429
I really enjoyed reading this material. It became more of a study than a simple reading. It truly has made a change in my life.
3893561
The world is changing by leaps and bounds. Technological growth supported by the human is creating smart facilities and environments. Under such circumstances, traditional values are breaking apart. People who are losing their traditional beliefs feel alienated. Are we to resist or accept change? The book &iexcl; Thinking in The Future Tense: A Workout For The Mind,&iexcl; written by Jennifer James, suggests that our brains must adapt to changing environments. As James puts it in the book, &iexcl;we cannot go backward; we cannot stand still,&iexcl;KYou can teach your mind to adapt to change, just as our bodies adapted to change through biological evolution&iexcl; (pp. 23-24). Therefore, the author is to heighten awareness of the present in order to consider the implications for the future.
Jennifer James, a cultural anthropologist who practices business forecasting, is a famous business speaker known throughout the world. She has led seminars with several large multinationals, and taught at a university for 12 years. She has also been a columnist for the features section of the Sunday Seattle Times for 12 years. By and large, her specialty in American culture, processes of change, diversity and new forms of intelligence have led her to write this book from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.
According to Jennifer James, individuals that cannot adjust themselves well to the new era will be left behind. The way, undoubtedly, for us to adapt to every demand in the future is to realize how the current change will affect our self-perception, life, business, society and the entire global village. To reach this goal, Jennifer James highly recommends that we, especially managers in organizations or companies, require skills including perspective, pattern recognition, cultural knowledge, flexibility, vision, energy, intelligence, and global values in order to predict what the future will look like. After providing skills necessary for future adaptations, she devotes one chapter to the discussion and development of each individual skill. Most interestingly, she cites one conclusion or paragraph from Marcel Proust, Marshall McLuhan, and Magraret Mead, etc. to support her core concept at the beginning of each chapter.
By and large, the author suggests that we should see everything in new eyes since &iexcl;a closed mind narrows our views of reality, making change difficult&iexcl; (p. 28). I also agree with Jennifer James&iexcl;s view that we have to notice the change, look ahead, keep our mind and eyes open, know our own limits, try something new every day, be relaxed, humorous, resilient and the like or we will be fearful of the future because we will not know how to explore uncertainty and unpredictability.
Readers will have fun with the book&iexcl;s many interesting test scales like &iexcl;quality of mind,&iexcl; &iexcl;now versus then,&iexcl; &iexcl;finding alternatives,&iexcl; since these tests can simultaneously help readers understand themselves. Generally speaking, this book is readable, provides practical strategies, rules, and comprehensive analyses for future thinking.
What impresses me the most in the book is that the author suggests that one&iexcl;s future success will depend on &iexcl;new economy&iexcl; skills because the jobs of the future will require mental, not manual skills. In the next wave of electronic age, I believe that knowledge is power. Intellectual skills will replace physical assets. Undoubtedly, a rational mind will be needed in the future. A rational mind will lead us to question our assumptions, and take a fresh look at our world and what we really know about it.
In conclusion, Jennifer James offers a number of new and dynamic ways for us to think in the future and teaches us how to master our own lives, businesses, and services by exploiting changes. This volume, of course, deserves being a worthy text for future studies.