"Only one question really matters. Does God exist or not? If he does, that has implications for every aspect of our personal and public behavior: all of our actions, all of our choices, all of our decisions. If God exists, denying him in our public life—whether we do it explicitly like Nietzsche or implicitly by our silence—cannot serve the common good, because it amounts to worshiping the unreal in the place of the real. "    
- Charles J. Chaput 

"...there is no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity.....a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below must embrace either the one or the other..."
- Cardinal John Henry Newman

"Sooner or later one is obliged to adopt a positive stance towards life and society. It would be putting it too crudely to say that every poet in our time must either die young, enter the Catholic Church, or join the Communist Party, but in fact the escape from the consciousness of futility is along these lines." 
- George Orwell

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses; The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony - Richard Bauckham

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- About the Author (Theopedia)

- Author's website.

- video: "Bauckham's "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" in a Nutshell". (2:33)


- video: longer exposition of thesis (10:28)

- audio: discussion with author , James Crossley,  and Justin Brierley (Unbelievable Radio Show), Part 1


- audio: discussion with author , James Crossley,  and Justin Brierley (Unbelievable Radio Show), Part 2

- video lecture: Dr. Peter Williams: "New Evidence the Gospels Were Based on Eyewitness Accounts"

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence -Paul Davies

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- About the Author


- Review by Sameer Rahim (U.K. Telegraph)


- Excerpt: Chapter 1; Is Anybody Out There? (NYTimes)


- Audio: Paul Davies & John Lennox on Unbelievable radio show; "Are We Alone in the Universe?"

- "Aliens? Be not afraid" by Joseph Wood (The Catholic Thing)

- "Alien Ideas Christianity and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life" by Benjamin D. Wiker (Catholic Education Resource Center)

- Wiki SETI page.           - The Drake Equation.                
  - The Fermi Paradox.      -The Great Filter.

   "We are so wedded to the human concept of a machine as, for example, chunks of metal with buttons and knobs, or as information being processed (as in software), that we find it hard to conceptualize technology involving levels of manipulation above these. What do I mean by this? A conventional machine  such as a car moves matter around in an organized way. Information technology on the other hand moves information around in an organized way. For example, Photoshop on my computer can rotate an image. When that happens, matter moves too, namely electrons in the computer's circuitry, but we wouldn't recognize the technology in action by observing the electrons - we see it via the complete image.
    One way to think about information is as a 'higher level' concept than matter. The higher level builds on, but transcends the lower level. Thus software - an abstract concept - invariably requires physical hardware to support it: swirling bits of information inside a computer, or sense data in the brain, need switches or neurons.  Now, I ask, are these two conceptual levels - matter and information - all there is? Five hundred years ago the very concept of a device manipulating information or software, would have been incomprehensible. Might there be a still higher level, as yet outside all human experience, that organizes information in the same way that information processing organizes electrons? If so, this 'third level' would never be manifest through observations made at the informational level, but that doesn't mean that it is non-existent, and we need to be open to the possibility that alien technology may operate at the third level, or maybe the fourth, fifth...levels.

The Goldilocks Enigma; Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life? -Paul Davies

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- About the Author

- video: Paul Davies on an Ultimate Explanation,   
- Part 1/5
- Part 2/5       
- Part 3/5      
- Part 4/5      
- Part 5/5

"I am convinced that human understanding of nature through science, rational reasoning, and mathematics points to a much deeper connection between life, mind, and cosmos than emerges from the crude lottery of multiverse cosmology combined with the weak anthropic principle. In some manner....life, mind, and physical law are part of a common scheme, mutually supporting.  Somehow, the universe has generated its own self-awareness. I shall argue in the coming sections that the bio-friendliness of the universe is an observer selection effect but that it operates at a much deeper level than the passive "winners in a random lottery" explanation.
   

The Privileged Planet; How Our Place In the Universe is Designed for Discovery -Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards

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- About the Authors

- Book's Website

Online Article:

"Condemned to Joy: The Western Cult of Happiness is a Mirthless Enterprise" - Pascal Bruckner (City Journal)

- About the Author.

"We are not the masters of the sources of happiness; they ever elude the appointments we make with them, springing up when we least expect them and fleeing when we would hold them close."

Online Article:

"Lent and the Religion of Humanity" by James V. Schall, S.J. (The Catholic Thing)

    "A web of evil seems to lock us into a despair about how to live a proper life, even when we finally acknowledge our own disorders. If, however, we accept the “religion of humanity,” we do not need to find a way out. We are doing what human beings “do.” This is humanity and its religion.

     The public disorders we see – and our approval of them in one form or another in courts, legislatures, or media – reflect an unwillingness to question the theories behind our actions. Generally speaking, intellectual disorders, that is, wrong or bad ideas, do not reflect a lack of intelligence. Rather, they are efforts to justify our actions. We rationalize the habits of sin or disorder that we know require a different way of life."

Eifelhiem - Michael Flynn

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- About the Author

- Eifelhiem Wki Page

- Author's Blog

- Review (Darwin Catholic)

The Big Questions in Science and Religion - Keith Ward

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- About the Author.

- video: author lecture,  "Materialism and It's Discontents" 

- other Gresham College lecture videos by Author.

New Proofs for the Existence of God; Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy - Robert J. Spitzer

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- About the Author (Wikipedia).

- Author's website: Magis Center of Reason and Faith

- Review by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. at IgnatiusInsight 

- Review by Paul Cat of Alive & Young Blog

- Video: Author on EWTN Live 

Discovering Aquinas: An Introduction to His Life, Work, and Influence -Aidan Nichols, O.P.

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- About the Author (Wikipedia).

God's Undertaker; Has Science Buried God? -John Lennox

- But this book.


- About the Author.


- Authors website.


- video; Author responds to Stephen Hawking

- video; Author interview ( bigquestions.com)

Who Choose the Gospels? ; Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy -C.E.Hill

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- About the Author.


- Review (CatholicCulture.org)

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels -Craig L. Blomberg

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- About the Author (Wikipedia)


- Authors Blog


- video lecture by Author; The Historical Jesus (Part 1/6) 

- video lecture by Author: Debugging the DaVinci Code


- Interview with Author (Justin Taylor, Between Two Worlds)

- article: "Why I Believe the New Testament is Historically Reliable" by Gary Habermas (Apologetics.com)

The Shallows; What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains - Nicholas Carr

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- About the Author (Wikipedia)
 
- Authors Blog

- Article by Author: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (Atlantic)

- Wikipedia Page for "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

- Article: "Scientific Study Indicates That Internet Addiction May Cause Brain Damage" (Time)


"The reading of a sequence of printed pages was valuable not just for the knowledge readers acquired from the author's words but from the way those words set off intellectual vibrations within their own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply as they read deeply.
    Even the earliest silent readers recognized the striking change in their consciousness that took place as they immersed themselves in the pages of a book. The medieval bishop Isaac of Syria described how, whenever he read to himself, "as in a dream, I enter a state when my sense and thoughts are concentrated. Then, when with prolonging of this silence the turmoil of memories is stilled in my heart, ceaseless waves of joy are sent me by inner thoughts, beyond expectation suddenly arising to delight my heart." Reading a book was a meditative act, but it didn't involve a clearing of the mind. It involved a filling, or replenishing, of the mind.  Readers disengaged their attention from the outward flow of passing stimuli in order to engage it more deeply with an inward flow of words, ideas, and emotions. That was - and is - the essence of the unique mental process of deep reading. It was the technology of the book that made this "strange anomaly" in our psychological history possible. The brain of the book reader was more than a literate brain. It was a literary brain."    (64-5)

The Haunted Bookshop -Christopher Morley

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- About the Author (Wikipedia).


- The Haunted Bookshop Wiki page.


- Complete text of book online.

The Roads to Modernity; The British,French, and American Enlightenments -Gertrude Himmelfarb

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- About the Author.


- Review (The New Criterion)


- Review: Peter Berkowitz in Policy Review


- Review (Claremont Review of Books)



   "The separation of church and state, however interpreted, did not signify the separation of church and society. On the contrary, religion was all the more rooted in society because it was not prescribed or established by the government. This is why, Tocqueville explained, religion and liberty coexisted and reinforced each other.  And this is the meaning of one of his most profound paradoxes: "Religion, which among Americans, never mixes directly in the government of society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not give them the taste for freedom, it singularly facilitates the use of it." Religion was "the first of their political institutions" because it was the prerequisite of both freedom and morality - thus of republican government itself.

True Grit - Charles Portis

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- About the Author (Wikipedia)

- True Grit Page on Wikipedia


- Video: Fr. Barron's review of the Coen Bros movie.

- Movie review (National Catholic Register)


Of Judge Parker, Mattie declares that:

“His manner was grave.  On his deathbed he asked for a priest and became a Catholic.  That was his wife’s religion.  It was his own business and none of mine.  If you had sentenced one hundred and sixty men to death and seen around eighty of them swing, then maybe at the last minute you would feel the need of some stronger medicine than the Methodists could make.  It is something to think about.”

The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored -George Weigel

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-About the Author (wikipedia)


- George Weigel article archive at National Review Online..







"I was once seated at a table with Weigel before I knew anything about him. He was probably the most pompous, boorish and shallow conversationalist I've ever encountered. He just assumes that he can make up stuff and nobody will challenge him because he's such an 'expert.' A most irritating evening" - Comment Box post on a very anti-Weigel article in the National Catholic Reporter.


    "To believe in this God, the father of Jesus Christ, is to believe that order and reason, rather than chaos and indifference, are at the root of things. To know this Father, through Jesus Christ, means to know "that love is present in the world, and that this love is more powerful than any kind of evil."
   We "cannot live without love," Pope John Paul writes. We cannot understand ourselves, we cannot make sense of life, unless love comes to us and we "participate intimately" in it. We sense our profound need for love instinctively. The God whom Jesus reveals is the guarantor that this intuition is one of the great truths of the human condition, not a psychological illusion."   (8)

After The Fall; Saving Capitalism from Wall Street - and Washington -Nicole Gelinas

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- About the Author. 

- Review; John Tamny at Real Clear Markets

- Video; Author on C-Span BookTV

The Abscence of Mind; The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self - Marilynne Robinson

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- About the Author (Wikipedia)

 - Review at Belief.net


- Review Links (The Complete Review)