Download In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief AudioBook Free
When Adam L. Kugel, one of the world's leading biblical scholars, was identified as having an ambitious, likely fatal form of tumor, he said, "I used to be, of course, disturbed and bothered. But the primary change in my own state of mind was that the background music suddenly ceased. Now I was just right down to myself, one little person, relaxing in the overdue summer sunshine, with just a few things left to do." He identified that same sense of smallness expressed in many early religious writings, and in the weeks that implemented, he started a voyage of finding, reexamining the most basic questions about the roots of religion and its universality, which possessed taken on immediate and vital importance for him. Weaving reflections on his own struggle---the love of his family became "as tangible as bread"---with the writings of anthropologists, neuroscientists, and poets, he leads listeners from prehistoric religious methods to the religious doubts of modern times via an amazing array of matters: the eerie starkness of middle ages cathedral architecture; the "looming Outdoors" exposed in African witchcraft; biblical encounters with angels; gospel recording features; and---through it all---the peculiar "sense of smallness" that, he argues, characterizes how all humans used to get pregnant of themselves. Kugel's look at the whole occurrence of religious beliefs is rigorously genuine, often funny, sometimes skeptical, but finally a deeply moving affirmation of beliefs in God. Believers and doubters likewise will be struck by its combination of objective scholarship and poetic insight---a beautifully crafted concern of life's biggest mystery.
