He also happens to have a Ph.D. in zoology and wrote his dissertation on evolution, atheism and naturalism. Preston Jones is a history professor at a Christian college and a fan of Bad Religion's music. One day, on a whim, Preston sent Greg an appreciative e-mail. That was the start of an extraordinary correspondence. For several months, Preston and Greg sent e-mails back and forth on big topics like God, religion, knowledge, evil, evolution, biology, destiny and the nature of reality. Preston believes in God; Greg sees insufficient evidence for God's existence. Over the course of their friendly debate, they tackle such cosmic questions as: Is religion rational or irrational? Does morality require belief in God? Do people only believe in God because they are genetically predisposed toward religion? How do you make sense of suffering in the world? Is this universe all there is? And what does it all matter? In this engaging book, Preston and Greg's actual e-mail correspondence is reproduced, along with bonus materials that provide additional background and context. Each makes his case for why he thinks his worldview is more compelling and explanatory. While they find some places to agree, neither one convinces the other. They can't both be right. So which worldview is more plausible? You decide.

    In Meditations on Living, Dying and Loss, Graham Coleman, the editor of Viking?s acclaimed unabridged translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, collects the most beautifully written passages, ones that draw out the central perspectives most relevant to modern experience: What is death? How can we help those who are dying? And how can we come to terms with bereavement? New to this edition are Coleman?s introduction and his brilliant and incisive essays, which preface each chapter and provide the seeker entrée to these ancient insights. With introductory commentary by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and a highly praised translation by Gyurme Dorje, this succinct but authoritative volume will convey the profundity of the original to those hungry for a better understanding of this life and the next.

    In Holy Envy, she contemplates the myriad ways other people and traditions encounter the Transcendent, both by digging deeper into those traditions herself and by seeing them through her students’ eyes as she sets off with them on field trips to monasteries, temples, and mosques. Troubled and inspired by what she learns, Taylor returns to her own tradition for guidance, finding new meaning in old teachings that have too often been used to exclude religious strangers instead of embracing the divine challenges they present. Re-imagining some central stories from the religion she knows best, she takes heart in how often God chooses outsiders to teach insiders how out-of-bounds God really is.Throughout Holy Envy, Taylor weaves together stories from the classroom with reflections on how her own spiritual journey has been complicated and renewed by connecting with people of other traditions—even those whose truths are quite different from hers.  The one constant in her odyssey is the sense that God is the one calling her to disown her version of God—a change that ultimately enriches her faith in other human beings and in God.

    Situating the reader within his own striking narrative, Potter presents himself simply enough as a young boy with questions. Throughout the book, Potter’s thoughts on these theories are punctuated by personal experiences — an honest approach that moves from one page to the next not un-like a conversation with a friend.And in this conversation, Potter articulates several characteristics of these world-views and the consequences they engender for our perspectives of everyday reality and for the ultimate purpose of our lives. Through the lens of these major views from the East and the West, 3 Theories of Everything effectively wrestles with questions of desire and suffering, examining their implications within each perspective.Potter asks readers to consider which view they would naturally identify themselves with and to think responsibly about why that is. In so doing, Potter both engages the reader with helpful big-picture information and also trusts them to relate it to their own contexts and experience. Based on lectures by the author, 3 Theories of Everything concludes with a large section of questions and answers drawn from live audience discussions that will no doubt leave the reader with a sense of recognition and plenty to think about.

    It is specially designed to make it easy for you to find the information you want and need. Amazing features in this fact-packed book include:More than 900 quotations from the writings of the early Church Fathers, as well as from rare and important documents dating back to the dawn of Christian history.Mini-biographies of nearly 100 Fathers, as well as descriptions of dozens of key early councils and writings.A concise history of the dramatic spread of Christianity after Jesus told his disciples to evangelize all nations.Special maps showing you where the Fathers lived, including many little-known and long-vanished locations.A guide to nearly 30 ancient heresies, many of which have returned to haunt the modern world.The Fathers' teaching on nearly 50 topics, including modern hot-button issues like abortion, homosexuality, and divorce.This groundbreaking work presents the teachings of the early Christians in a way unlike any other book. It flings open the doors of the crucial but little-known age covering the birth of Christianity and the triumphant march of the gospel throughout the ancient world.

    A trusted apologist provides a fresh, balanced approach to understanding how a loving God can preside over a world filled with evil and suffering

    Thomas wrote, then turn to The One-Minute Aquinas, the fast-paced book that provides busy readers with simple, readable explanations of the truths that, for 750 years now, have caused the works of St. Thomas to be sought out by kings and popes, scholars and saints, as well as by ordinary souls like you — hungry to know God and to love him more and more.In this book’s lucid pages, author Kevin Vost gives you small, digestible portions of St. Thomas’s life-giving wisdom that you can enjoy one minute at a time. Tables and graphics will help you grasp and remember St. Thomas’s key ideas with a minimum of time and effort.Best of all, in The One-Minute Aquinas you’ll find quick, sure refutations of the countless relativistic, secular, and pseudoscientific ideas that are so influential in our culture today — and so shallow, contradictory, and wrong!Pope John Paul II declared that “the Church has been justified in consistently proposing St. Thomas as a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology.” Now The One-Minute Aquinas enables even those with limited time and only a modest education to benefit from the wisdom of this great saint.Here, with minimal effort and among scores of other things, you’ll finally come to know and understand:--Why God permits evil--Heaven: what it is (and is not)--Five simple proofs that God exists--Why God became man--Why Jesus let himself be tempted--How you can grow quickly in virtue--Why all souls need the sacraments--Why Jesus let himself be crucified--The causes of lust--The natural law and the Commandments--The soul, free will, sin, and damnation--The angels, their ranks, and their powers--How God governs (and refrains from governing)--God’s power and its limits--The Bible: why didn’t Jesus just write it himself?--The surprising qualities of our resurrected bodies

    Can you believe that physical reality is created by our observation of it? Physicists were forced to this conclusion, the quantum enigma, by what they observed in their laboratories.Trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics and found, to their embarrassment, that their theory intimately connects consciousness with the physical world. Quantum Enigma explores what that implies and why some founders of the theory became the foremost objectors to it. Schr�dinger showed that it absurdly allowed a cat to be in a superposition simultaneously dead and alive. Einstein derided the theory's spooky interactions. With Bell's Theorem, we now know Schr�dinger's superpositions and Einstein's spooky interactions indeed exist.Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all of this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and bits about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, with an emphasis on what is and what is not speculation.Physics' encounter with consciousness is its skeleton in the closet. Because the authors open the closet and examine the skeleton, theirs is a controversial book. Quantum Enigma's description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is controversial.Every interpretation of quantum physics encounters consciousness. Rosenblum and Kuttner therefore turn to exploring consciousness itself--and encounter quantum physics. Free will and anthropic principles become crucial issues, and the connection of consciousness with the cosmos suggested by some leading quantum cosmologists is mind-blowing.Readers are brought to a boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer a sure guide. They will find, instead, the facts and hints provided by quantum mechanics and the ability to speculate for themselves.

    The idea of our own “righteous anger” is a myth. It is the number one problem in our societies today and, as Dallas Willard says, Christians have not been taught out of it. But what if Christians were the most unoffendable people on the planet?In Unoffendable you will find concrete, practical ways to live life with less stress, including: Adjusting your expectations to fit human natureReplacing perpetual anger with refreshing humility and gratitudeEmbracing forgiveness and beginning to love others in unexpected waysIn a humorous and conversational style, Unoffendable seeks to lift religious burdens from our backs and allow us to experience the joy of gratitude, perhaps for the first time, every single day of our lives—flourishing the way God intended.

    Why do we believe that God exists, that he became a man and came to save us, that what looks like a wafer of bread is actually his body? Why do we believe that he inspired a holy book and founded an infallible Church to teach us the one true way to live?Ever since he became Catholic, Trent Horn has spent a lot of time answering these questions, trying to explain to friends, family, and total strangers the reasons for his faithSome didn’t believe in God, or even in the existence of truth.Others said they were spiritual but didn’t think you needed religion to be happy.Some were Christians who thought Catholic doctrines over-complicated the pure gospel.And some were fellow Catholics who had a hard time understanding everything they professed to believe on Sunday.Why We’re Catholic assembles the clearest, friendliest, most helpful answers that Trent learned to give to all these people and more. Beginning with how we can know reality and ending with our hope of eternal life, it’s the perfect way to help skeptics and seekers (or Catholics who want to firm up their faith) understand the evidence that bolsters our belief—and brings us joy.

    In this book, author Fred Heeren tells why even Einstein had to revise his thinking to bring it in line with the Bible's claims. Through Heeren's interviews with Steven Hawking and Nobel prize-winning physicists, you'll learn why many leading cosmologists today are bringing God into the equation.

    Nancy Abrams, a philosopher of science, lawyer, and lifelong atheist, is among them. And yet, when she turned to the recovery community to face a personal struggle, she found that imagining a higher power gave her a new freedom. Intellectually, this was quite surprising.   Meanwhile her husband, famed astrophysicist Joel Primack, was helping create a new theory of the universe based on dark matter and dark energy, and Abrams was collaborating with him on two books that put the new scientific picture into a social and political context. She wondered, “Could anything actually exist in this strange new universe that is worthy of the name ‘God?’”   In A God That Could Be Real, Abrams explores a radically new way of thinking about God. She dismantles several common assumptions about God and shows why an omniscient, omnipotent God that created the universe and plans what happens is incompatible with science—but that this doesn’t preclude a God that can comfort and empower us.   Moving away from traditional arguments for God, Abrams finds something worthy of the name “God” in the new science of emergence: just as a complex ant hill emerges from the collective behavior of individually clueless ants, and just as the global economy emerges from the interactions of billions of individuals’ choices, God, she argues, is an “emergent phenomenon” that arises from the staggering complexity of humanity’s collective aspirations and is in dialogue with every individual. This God did not create the universe—it created the meaning of the universe. It’s not universal—it’s planetary. It can’t change the world, but it helps us change the world. A God that could be real, Abrams shows us, is what humanity needs to inspire us to collectively cooperate to protect our warming planet and create a long-term civilization.

    Written by three leaders belonging to different faiths, the book explores in accessible language the mythic quality and the teachings of reconciliation that are embedded in the Torah, the Qur'an, and the Bible.

    Why, in short, won’t God go away? In this groundbreaking new book, researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’Aquili offer an explanation that is at once profoundly simple and scientifically precise: The religious impulse is rooted in the biology of the brain.In Why God Won’t Go Away, Newberg and d’Aquili document their pioneering explorations in the field of neurotheology, an emerging discipline dedicated to understanding the complex relationship between spirituality and the brain. Blending cutting-edge science with illuminating insights into the nature of consciousness and spirituality, they bridge faith and reason, mysticism and empirical data. The neurological basis of how the brain identifies the “real” is nothing short of miraculous. This fascinating, eye-opening book dares to explore both the miracle and the biology of our enduring relationship with God.

    Time for a Reality CheckNancy Pearcey, bestselling and critically acclaimed author, offers fresh tools to break free from presumed certainties and test them against reality. In Finding Truth, she explains five powerful principles that penetrate to the core of any worldview—secular or religious—to uncover its deepest motivations and weigh its claims. A former agnostic, Pearcey demonstrates that a robust Christian worldview matches reality--that it is not only true but attractive, granting higher dignity to the human person than any alternative. Finding Truth displays Pearcey's well-earned reputation for clear and cogent writing. She brings themes to life with personal stories and real-world examples. The book includes a study guide shaped by questions from readers, from teens to college professors. It is ideal for individual or group study.