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Happiness is within everyone's grasp and is only a matter of making the right choices. Taking destiny into one's own hands and having the creative audacity to strive, seek, and meet challenges is the essence of life's drama and exaltation. Life per se has no meaning; it only presents opportunity to be seized and acted upon, thus paving the way for personal achievement and the full life. Paul Kurtz, in Exuberance, shows his readers how to banish drudgery from life and how to find happiness in the active life. Drawing upon his personal experience, knowledge, and success, Kurtz explains his philosophy of life, discussing learning and work, pleasure, eroticism and sexuality, morality, the need for love and friendship, and participation in contemporary issues. He suggests that self-power, resourcefulness, daring, creativity, and intelligence help guide and control one's life in spite of the many obstacles along the way. Only the individual can initiate his own success and therefore can take pride in accomplishing what he sets out to do. Exuberance also shows the reader how to cope with an ambiguous world. Life is charged with unexpected events and bizarre happenings. It is filled with richly diverse and idiosyncratic characters. Constant effort and exertion is needed in making a living, meeting new friends, falling in love, raising children, seeing projects through, and coming to terms with old age and death. Dealing with these problems directly rather than fleeing from life's risks reinforces a person and leads him towards an exuberant, rich, zestful life. According to Dr. Kurtz, the fulfillment of one's own purpose is in creating one's own ends and expending the power and energy to attain them. Thus, life's great sin, he suggests, is being lazy and noncreative. From the Trade Paperback edition

Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Foreword: Paul Kurtz and the Transcendency of Skepticism -- Preface to the paperback edition -- Preface: The skeptic versus the believer -- Introduction: Not for philosophers only -- Philosophy and the new media -- The need for reflective wisdom -- Part One: Skepticism and the Meaning of Life -- I. Meaning and transcendence -- The value of life: Things left unsaid -- Why has secular humanism failed to take hold? -- The quest for transcendence -- II. Skepticism -- Skepticism as unlimited doubt -- Skepticism as selective doubt -- III. The scientific method -- What is science? -- Subjectivistic methodology -- Testing truth-claims in science -- Evidence -- Logical coherence -- Pragmatic consequences -- Vindication of the scientific method -- IV. Critical intelligence -- Rationalism -- What is critical intelligence? -- A catalogue of intellectual skills -- The role of education -- V. The justification of belief -- Deferring to custom -- The appeal to emotion -- The appeal to authority -- Subjectivism and intuition -- Faith as justification for belief -- Part Two: Mysticism, Revelation, and God -- VI. The appeal to mysticism -- What is mysticism? -- Some naturalistic explanations -- Hallucinogens and mysticism -- Evaluating the mystical-psychedelic experience -- VII. The Jesus myth -- The appeal to revelation and miracles -- Biblical criticism -- Did Jesus exist? -- Who was the historical Jesus? -- The critics of Jesus -- The ministry of Jesus -- The ethical teachings of Jesus -- Was Jesus disturbed? -- Was Jesus a magician? -- Miracles attributed to Jesus -- Objections to miracles -- Some alternative naturalistic explanations -- The crucifixion and death of Jesus -- The resurrection: What is the evidence? -- Conclusion -- VIII. Moses and the chosen people -- Was Moses an Egyptian?.

The affirmations of humanism -- The new skepticism -- A new paradigm -- Eupraxsophy -- The common moral decencies -- Ethical excellences -- Joyful exuberance : the fullness of life -- Creating your own meanings -- Eroticism -- Loving another person -- A good marriage or civil union -- Being a loving parent -- The beloved cause -- Planetary humanism -- Aphorisms of the good will -- Facing death with courage -- For a new future.

Does life have meaning if one rejects belief in God? This book responds affirmatively to that question. Paul Kurtz, America's leading secular humanist, provides a powerful defense of the humanist alternative, rejecting both religious spirituality and nihilism. In this inspirational book, Kurtz outlines the basic virtues of the secular humanist outlook. These virtues include courage, not simply to be or to survive, but to overcome and become; that is, to fulfill our highest aspirations and ideals in the face of obstacles. The two other virtues Kurtz identifies are cognition (reason and science