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The "Golden Age of Freethought" was an approximately fifty-year-long period, from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of U.S. involvement in the First World War, during which time American atheists and agnostics who called themselves "freethinkers," "liberals," or "infidels," sought to strengthen the "wall of separation between church and state" and to reshape American society by appealing to their fellow-citizens to abandon their religious faith and to embrace a culture of science, reason, and rational thought instead. During this era, in which a vibrant freethought press flourished and "liberal" associations could be found in towns and cities all over the country, Texans were among not only some of the most active and enthusiastic participants but also leaders in the movement. Shortly after one of the first (and perhaps the very first) "liberal" associations in the United States was formed in Bell County in 1873, the respected physician that served as its leader was brutally horse-whipped by Christian zealots who objected to his "infidelity." Undeterred, other groups of "liberals" or "freethinkers," many of them highly respected doctors, lawyers, and businessmen, began meeting regularly in towns and cities all across the Texas, such as Austin, Dallas, Denison, Houston, San Antonio, and Waco, just to name a few. For nearly two decades (1875-1894), there was even a town in East Texas called Ingersoll, named in honor of Robert G. Ingersoll, America's celebrated "Great Agnostic:" lecturer, who toured Texas twice, in 1896 and 1898. Periodically, other prominent freethought lecturers also toured the state. In 1890, the formation of a Texas Liberal Association was spearheaded by one of the movement's foremost freethought publishers, J. D. Shaw of The Independent Pulpit. Other Texas-based freethought publications included Capt. Richard Peterson's Common Sense and Dallas printer John R. Spencer's The Agnostic. Many intelligent, well-read Texans were regular contributors to freethought periodicals. In Guided by Reason: The Golden Age of Freethought in Texas, Steven R. Butler has combined original research with first-hand nineteenth century accounts to narrate the previously untold story of a little known but noteworthy era in Texas history.
For centuries, philosophers, theologians, moralists, and ordinary people have asked: How should we live? What makes for a good life? In The Best Things in Life, distinguished philosopher Thomas Hurka takes a fresh look at these perennial questions as they arise for us now in the 21st century. Should we value family over career? How do we balance self-interest and serving others? What activities bring us the most joy? While religion, literature, popular psychology, and everyday wisdom all grapple with these questions, philosophy more than anything else uses the tools of reason to make important distinctions, cut away irrelevancies, and distill these issues down to their essentials. Hurka argues that if we are to live a good life, one thing we need to know is which activities and experiences will most likely lead us to happiness and which will keep us from it, while also reminding us that happiness isn't the only thing that makes life good. Hurka explores many topics: four types of good feeling (and the limits of good feeling); how we can improve our baseline level of happiness (making more money, it turns out, isn't the answer); which kinds of knowledge are most worth having; the importance of achieving worthwhile goals; the value of love and friendship; and much more. Unlike many philosophers, he stresses that there isn't just one good in life but many: pleasure, as Epicurus argued, is indeed one, but knowledge, as Socrates contended, is another, as is achievement. And while the great philosophers can help us understand what matters most in life, Hurka shows that we must ultimately decide for ourselves. This delightfully accessible book offers timely guidance on answering the most important question any of us will ever ask: How do we live a good life?
In Magic’s Reason, Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic. The two pursuits are not as separate as they may seem at first. As Jones shows, they not only matured around the same time, but they also shared mutually reinforcing stances toward modernity and rationality. It is no historical accident, for example, that colonial ethnographers drew analogies between Western magicians and native ritual performers, who, in their view, hoodwinked gullible people into believing their sleight of hand was divine. Using French magicians’ engagements with North African ritual performers as a case study, Jones shows how magic became enshrined in anthropological reasoning. Acknowledging the residue of magic’s colonial origins doesn’t require us to dispense with it. Rather, through this radical reassessment of classic anthropological ideas, Magic’s Reason develops a new perspective on the promise and peril of cross-cultural comparison.