E.T. and The Fermi Paradox: Are We Alone in the Cosmos?
. . . For Father Georges Lemaitre, for me, and now for my friend, Joseph, there comes a point when "a profoundly improbable sequence" of events crosses a border into the profoundly impossible. Science has promised a better explanation for centuries, but it hasn't ever delivered one. Creation and our Creator become the sole rational explanation for what seems otherwise irrational and impossible: life itself, and not just life, us! - the impossible mathematical odds against the very existence with which we ponder Him. And thus far, at least, we ponder Him alone. "I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details." Albert Einstein . . .
More on Pro-Catholic Star Trek, and the Books of Winter's Long Night
. . . I don't mean to pick on Jacqueline Suzanne and Harold Robbins, though Mr. Spock might have. Their books are actually quite popular in prison where any human dramas - even the seediest ones - are preferable to the ones prisoners are living. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are also very popular here, as are many classic authors like Jack London, Mark Twain, and John Steinbeck. The literary elite are as snooty in prison as anywhere else. Not long ago in the Library check-out line, I saw a prisoner with a pair of Steinbecks sneer at a grizzly-looking guy in line with a stack of books by Jackie Collins and Nora Roberts. The question of what books endure the test of time doesn't really apply here. Many prisoners will read whatever they can get their hands on, within limits. Part of my job in the library is to fill book requests for prisoners who have misbehaved and have been hauled off to "the hole" for weeks, or months, or sometimes years. . . .