There is no soul that lives on past the death of the body, no reincarnation, no life after death. Most religions today are outdated, and their teachings can no longer be logically sustained. Fear of death and what is to become of us after we die has motivated humans to create stories and belief systems that do not stand up to rational argument. The universe is eternal, but a single human’s place in it is not. First Person Singular replaces the need to believe in a God that can be explained into nonexistence. This book perspective has been crafted to help us confront the reality of our mortality. The First Person Singular—“I”—will always exist. By examining issues of religion, history, biology, astrophysics, and philosophy, the author explains how religions cannot be defended as offering a promise of eternal life or reincarnation. Human lives, however remarkable, are but trivial in the scope of evolution and the universe. First Person Singular offers assurance that “I” will live as long as the last human being is alive on Earth.

The relationship between story and game, and related questions of electronic writing and play, examined through a series of discussions among new media creators and theorists.

“Redefines ‘unputdownable.’” —Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling author of Illuminae “I was thrilled. I was shocked.” —NPR “Stunning twists and turns.” —BCCB (starred review) In this gripping debut novel, seventeen-year-old Cat must use her gene-hacking skills to decode her late father’s message concealing a vaccine to a horrifying plague. Catarina Agatta is a hacker. She can cripple mainframes and crash through firewalls, but that’s not what makes her special. In Cat’s world, people are implanted with technology to recode their DNA, allowing them to change their bodies in any way they want. And Cat happens to be a gene-hacking genius. That’s no surprise, since Cat’s father is Dr. Lachlan Agatta, a legendary geneticist who may be the last hope for defeating a plague that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. But during the outbreak, Lachlan was kidnapped by a shadowy organization called Cartaxus, leaving Cat to survive the last two years on her own. When a Cartaxus soldier, Cole, arrives with news that her father has been killed, Cat’s instincts tell her it’s just another Cartaxus lie. But Cole also brings a message: before Lachlan died, he managed to create a vaccine, and Cole needs Cat’s help to release it and save the human race. Now Cat must decide who she can trust: The soldier with secrets of his own? The father who made her promise to hide from Cartaxus at all costs? In a world where nature itself can be rewritten, how much can she even trust herself?

As the daughter of Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade, Cassie Cage thinks she's seen it all. But when she finds herself in an illegal MMA deathmatch, Cassie must decide if she's ready for her first taste of Mortal Kombat!

This book has two main theses. First, for the biblical/Christian doctrine of sin the root of the human problem is hardness of heart--the corruption of the core self, of the seat of understanding and will. On the other hand, for an important strand of Greek tragedy the root of human harm-doing is the nonculpable blindness and anxiety of finitude that despite the initial nonculpability lead to evil and suffering. The Hardened Heart shows that these two different interpretations of human existence are amenable to a degree of synthesis that leads to this conclusion: hardness of heart and our ordinary finitude together collude to cause sin in its fullness. The second thesis of this volume is that exegetical studies disclose a deconstructive strand in certain biblical texts that represents the finite world that God created as a source of distress and harm-doing in something like the tragic sense. This subdominant deconstructive position challenges the dominant biblical vision, in which the creation came forth from God's creative word as good without qualification.

An introduction to one of the world's most iconic fighting games