Top Down to Jesus, Book 1: a Scientist's Faith

The Title, “Top-down to Jesus”, paraphrases what one of my o heroes, Pope St. John Paul II, wrote: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” Encyclical Fides et Ratio

In Book I, A Scientist’s Faith, I write about my conversion to the Church.   It came about, not as a vision of Our Lord or by the sound of His Voice, but by a rational process.   The great mathematician and scientist, Blaise Pascal also wrote about why the prudent person should believe in God, and I’ll discuss this in “Pascal’s Wager Revisited.”  Not only  “top down”, but through the heart has the Holy Spirit come to me, moments aided by music, so I’ve written about those also.    

The book is divided into four parts, which reflect my road to faith and how the Catholic Church sustains me:

Part 1—My Road to Faith, Part 2—Being a Catholic Jew, Part 3—My Moral Choices, Part 4—Loving Our Enemies.    Twenty-five years ago I became interested in the Church because of its anti-abortion, pro-life stance, so  this first Book includes chapters on the moral stance I take as a concomitant of my Catholic faith.    I came to the Church as an agnostic Jew, so I also explore the differences and the similarities between Catholicism and Judaism.