The Single Simple Question that Challenges All Convictions

Does every event have a cause? The question seems innocuous enough; hardly expected to lead directly into all kinds of trouble. It should have an easy straightforward answer. Except it doesn't. And the proposition that the answer challenges every other belief we hold in our ethics, our politics, and even our personal theologies, is downright preposterous. Except it does. Through a progression of short connected essays and soliloquies, this provocative book explores the profound psychological, moral, and spiritual implications that follow from this one simple (yes or no) question, weaving the most intriguing perplexities of neuroscience and modern physics into the three paramount (life and death) concerns of every thoughtful human being: The existence of God, the prospect of immortality, and finding meaning in our present lives. Moving succinctly from sensible neurophysiology and basic chaos theory, to the baffling enigma of consciousness and the bewildering weirdness of quantum theory, it bravely confronts the inescapable corollary question: Do we have free will?This bold venture into trustworthy determinism and uplifting secular humanism might be unsettling, maybe even upsetting, for some good people, including all too many prayerful patients and faithful friends. Hence the author, a primary care physician in southwestern Wisconsin, has taken a pen name. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Medical School, Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and UW Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine from 1982 to 2011, his professional writings have appeared in a wide variety of national journals, including JAMA, Archives of Internal Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, and Annals of Internal Medicine.