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Superstition
- A Very Short Introduction
- Narrated by: Mike Carnes
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
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Despite the dominance of science in today's world, superstitious beliefs - both traditional and new - remain surprisingly popular. A recent survey of adults in the United States found that 33 percent believed that finding a penny was good luck, and 23 percent believed that the number seven was lucky. Where did these superstitions come from, and why do they persist today?
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- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Here is the remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy, and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile, Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse.
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Missing history
- By Robert on 11-26-11
By: Jonathan Lyons
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Seven Lies about Catholic History: Infamous Myths about the Church's Past and How to Answer Them
- By: Diane Moczar
- Narrated by: Kevin F. Spalding
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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The world hates the Church that Jesus founded, just as He said it would (John 15:18). It reviles her doctrines, mocks her moral teachings and invents lies about her history. In every age, but especially in our modern day, historians and political powers have distorted the facts about her past (or just made up novel falsehoods from scratch) to make the Church, and the civilization it fostered, seem corrupt, backward, or simply evil.
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excellent read
- By Christine A Carty on 02-27-16
By: Diane Moczar
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Drawing Down the Moon
- Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America
- By: Margot Adler
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 20 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Almost 40 years since its original publication, Drawing Down the Moon continues to be the only detailed history of the burgeoning but still widely misunderstood Neo-Pagan subculture. Margot Adler attended ritual gatherings and interviewed a diverse, colorful gallery of people across the United States, people who find inspiration in ancient deities, nature, myth, even science fiction. In this revised edition, Adler takes a fascinating and honest look at the religious experiences, beliefs, and lifestyles of modern America's Pagan groups.
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Important history lesson but missing elements
- By Waterfall on 09-12-20
By: Margot Adler
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Battling the Gods
- Atheism in the Ancient World
- By: Tim Whitmarsh
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Long before the European Enlightenment and the Darwinian revolution, which we often take to mark the birth of the modern revolt against religious explanations of the world, brave people doubted the power of the gods. Religion provoked skepticism in ancient Greece, and heretics argued that history must be understood as a result of human action rather than divine intervention. They devised theories of the cosmos based on matter and notions of matter based on atoms.
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We have a history as long and as rich as any relig
- By Glencannnon on 08-13-19
By: Tim Whitmarsh
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The Evolution of God
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In this sweeping narrative, which takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy.
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Very heavy reading
- By Stephen on 08-07-09
By: Robert Wright
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The Closing of the Western Mind
- The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason
- By: Charles Freeman
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 368 AD, he changed the course of European history in ways that continue to have repercussions to the present day. Adopting those aspects of the religion that suited his purposes, he turned Rome on a course from the relatively open, tolerant, and pluralistic civilization of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority, whether that of the Bible, or the writings of Ptolemy in astronomy and of Galen and Hippocrates in medicine.
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Not proven
- By Jeffrey D on 04-30-21
By: Charles Freeman
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Ibn Khaldun
- An Intellectual Biography
- By: Robert Irwin
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world - a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.
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Issues with accuracy, pronounciation
- By Moh 3aly on 01-02-19
By: Robert Irwin
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