The gift of God
Eternal life. To many people these days, it sounds like such a fairy-tale, Spanish-conquistador-age ideal. Who cares about eternal life when you're a highly successful New York businessman and you've got a solar-powered cabin on a private lake in the Alaskan wilderness? At least my traveling acquaintance, the middle-aged brainiac with a PhD in computer sciences I sat next to for three hours on a flight last week didn't. Not long after take-off, I got a hint that the conversation would be interesting. He was reading a book on astrology. I was not disappointed. After discussions--er, I just tried to keep up with his vocabulary--on everything from the vibrations of sound to computer software ethics, our discussion eventually turned to the spiritual. Blinking carefully, he calmly defined himself as a deist. Well-educated in mathematics, history, and world religions, he has concluded that there is indeed a higher being who will one day judge us. Of course, he acknowledges tha...