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The end of heaven : disaster and suffering in a scientific age / Sidney Dekker.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Dekker, Sidney, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Suffering.
- Disasters.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (111 pages)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- London, [England] ; New York, New York : Routledge, 2017.
- Summary:
- In this unique book, Dekker tackles a largely unexplored dilemma. Our scientific age has equipped us ever better for explaining why things go wrong. But this increasing sophistication actually makes it harder to explain why we suffer. Accidents and disasters have become technical problems without inherent purpose. When told of a disaster, we easily feel lost in the steely emptiness of technical languages of engineering or medicine. Or, in our drive to pinpoint the source of suffering, we succumb to the hunt for a scapegoat, possibly inflicting even greater suffering on others around us. Broad in its historical sweep and ambition, The End of Heaven is also Dekker's most personal book to date.
- Contents:
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1. Disaster, religion and science
- The book of blots
- A question of what, a question of why
- Acts of God
- Better be wrong than afraid
- Notes
- 2. Son of a preacherwoman
- Disaster without sacred purpose
- Mutable religion
- Secularization and suffering
- 3. The entitled class
- Pride before the disaster
- Rebels and thieves
- 4. Existential dread
- Free to choose
- 5. Human error
- You asked for it
- Get shot
- 6. A question of faith
- Silver lining
- A last murmur and a nightingale
- 7. Killing death
- Puppies and jewels
- The book of the dead
- "I saw my dead father approaching"
- 8. Returning to dust
- The politics of disaster
- From revenge to reunion
- 9. Grief without a god
- Future of an illusion
- "It is all over"
- 10. The end of death
- Death as a technical problem
- From Cicero to C. S. Lewis
- The meaning of life
- We're not the first
- 11. Resurrecting heaven
- Man-made
- Slack morals
- A better world
- Science as the new savior?
- Coda
- Bibliography
- Index.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Description based on print version record.
- ISBN:
- 1-351-81920-8
- OCLC:
- 1004564474
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