Author-illustrator Robert James Luedke started honing his graphic gifts in second grade, when he was asked to draw his teachers. It was the school's way of keeping him out of trouble, he says. In July, the Texas-based artist did a two-fer, attending both the International Christian Retail Show and Comic Con International trade shows to promote Eye Witness: Rise of the Apostle (Head Press, Aug. 13), the graphic story of how Saul of Tarsus, persecutor of the followers of Jesus, becomes the apostle Paul, the theological architect of the Christian church, part of an Eye Witness series on Jesus and the early years of the church.  

RBL: What kind of reaction have you gotten at Comic Con over the past few years?

Luedke: The first year, in 2004, I guess the best way I can describe the reaction is guarded. It was so unusual for there to be a Christian presence at Comic Con. This year it really seemed to bloom. People said to me, 'Have you been here before?' As we're wearing them down and we're there, they say, 'Hey, they're people just like us, they enjoy Star Wars and games and they also have a message to tell.' 

Read the full story...

While atheists have lately been busy loudly dismissing religion as irrational, perfectly rational scientists who are also believers have been steadily coming out of the religion closet to make scientific cases for God or to explore the physical basis of the religious experience.

Physics is one discipline that lends itself to big questions. In Creative Evolution: A Physicist's Resolution between Darwinism and Intelligent Design (Quest Books, Oct.), physicist Amit Goswami continues plumbing quantum physics to argue that consciousness, not matter, is the ultimate basis of the universe. That fundamental law resolves current scientific paradoxes and makes science and religion compatible rather than antagonistic. "The fundamental hypothesis of all religions is that consciousness is the ground of being," he said at a recent appearance at The Theosophical Society of America in Wheaton, Ill. Reared a Hindu, Goswami came to America in the 1960s and taught physics at the University of Oregon for 35 years. Those who saw the 2004 film What the Bleep Do We Know?, a sleeper hit about cosmology starring Marlee Matlin, will recognize the soft-spoken retired professor as one of that film's talking heads.

Read the full story...