This is a unique book on how probability affects our everyday lives. It guides the reader in an almost chronological trip through the fascinating and amazing laws of chance, omnipresent in the natural world and in our daily lives. Along the way many fascinating topics are discussed. These include challenging probability paradoxes, "paranormal" coincidences, game odds, and causes and effects. Finally the author discusses possibilities and limitations of learning the laws of a Universe immersed in chance events. This charming book, with its many easy-to-follow mathematical examples, will inform and entertain the scientist and non-scientist alike.

Chance Divine explores the broadest territory possible, from the origins of the universe to the speculative, precarious future. Visionary, wildly unpredictable, and often unsettlingly funny, this is a book that matters.

Divine is used to getting what she wants.... Thanks to her loving Aunt Phoebe and Uncle Reed, Divine Matthews-Hardison has a place to call home after the Hollywood life she was accustomed to fell apart at the seams. Getting away from the spotlight that nearly destroyed her own parents, Divine has changed for the better -- though there's still enough diva in Divine to keep life in Temple, Georgia, very lively, from mall shopping with her cousin Alyssa and her fashion-challenged aunt, to worshipping at her uncle's church, to dating. But what if it's too much too soon? Divine has boys on the brain and she's itching for a social life -- at least as much as is allowed under Uncle Reed's watchful eyes. She knows she's too young for the kind of secretive drama her cousin Chance is going through with his girlfriend, but still.... Turning to the internet, Divine gets a major crush on sixteen-year-old Sean, who sounds and looks like the perfect guy. But she is about to learn a difficult -- and potentially dangerous -- lesson: Things are not always what they appear to be....

Published in 1999. How can we reconcile assumptions about the lawfulness of the universe with provision for chance events? Do the ‘laws of nature’ indicate what absolutely must happen, or just what is most likely to happen? These are important questions for both science and theology, and are explored here in the first in-depth coverage of an important but neglected topic. Including perspectives from prestigious contributions, and published with the backing of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR), Creation: Law and Probability employs the disciplines of history and philosophy, as well as cosmology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience in a fascinating dialogue of faith traditions.

Did God create man? Or did man create God? Famed German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach explores the answer in this, his most influential work, published in German in 1841 and translated by celebrated English novelist George Eliot. Using Biblical references, dialectics, and ideas from some of the world's greatest thinkers, he confronts believers with his cogent explanation. Approaching religion from a humanistic perspective, Feuerbach explores the idea that divinity is an outward projection of our idealistic human nature. Asserting that nothing is higher than the perfection found in mankind, he proposes that a Supreme Being was created by man seeking comfort and relief from a hostile world, challenging tenets of Christianity from creation and the resurrection to faith and miracles. Feuerbach's critique of Hegelian idealism excited immediate international attention — influencing Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Engels in particular. Thought-provoking and utterly compelling, this historically significant polemic is must reading for lifelong students of religion and philosophy.

The long-standing, but unresolved debate of the virtues and values of multilateralism vs. unilateralism in American foreign policy is critically important in today's complicated world. To understand the history of each approach is to understand their opportunities and challenges for the future. The Best Laid Plans answers two central questions. First, why did the United States embrace the principles and practices of liberal multilateralism during World War II? Second, why did it cling to this vision of world order despite the outbreak of the Cold War in the late 1940s, as the 'One World' that had been anticipated by U.S. postwar planners split into two rival global camps? The book contends that neither the U.S. turn to liberal multilateralism nor the persistence of this orientation during the Cold War can be attributed solely or even primarily to the global power structure or crude considerations of material self interest. Rather, Stewart Patrick argues that a combination of enduring identity commitments and new ideas, based on the lessons of recent, cataclysmic events, shaped the policy preferences of American central decision-makers in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Although the book is steeped in history, its conclusions have tremendous relevance for the contemporary era, when the United States once again finds itself at the apex of world power, and debates are rife about the role of multilateral cooperation in the realization of U.S. foreign policy objectives.