Murder Trilogy

This volume joins three murder novellas in one publication to emphasize the contrast between two worldviews: Naturalism and Christian Theism. There are other worldviews other than these two; however, in America, Christian Theism has been caricatured as the enemy of naturalistic science. Christian Theism, many claim, is at best the remnant of a religious fanaticism based on dogmas of a pre-scientific, modern era. Thus, any link between the naturalism of modern science and the supernatural of Christian Theism is ridiculed, disparaged, or simply denied as unnecessary, irrelevant, or stupid. A comparison of these two worldviews, the natural and the supernatural, to contrast their presuppositions will shed light on the belief systems of each. The reader may then judge which worldview addresses in consistent fashion the ultimate questions human being have posed about reality, life, meaning, knowledge, values, and destiny. Other subsidiary considerations played a minor role in this anthology of three books. First, the three novellas share similar titles. The theme is murder and the method emphasizes the use of logic to resolve not so much a "who donnit?" as the formulation of a thought-experiment using logic and available evidence to reconstruct a plausible, coherent account of an event, then testing the model according to two principles: systematic consistency and smooth empirical fit. Second, the novellas are short exercises in theory building. As such, the facts of each case involve the death of an individual. The death or murder in each case is a "closed case." Nevertheless, questions, troublesome questions, remain for which some logical explanation is required by interested parties who are willing to pay for the services of a Private Investigator (PI). The job of the PI requires a complete, thorough reassessment of all the evidence, police reports, and the victim's personal data relevant to the tragic event of death. Third, the contrast of worldviews seeks to make clear that the supernatural cannot be ignored in any attempt to achieve a rational explanation that is consistent with all the known evidence of a death or murder of a human being and, in short, "make sense." Thus, the rationale for this volume of three novellas: One Murder One, One Murder Two, and One Murder Three. The reader is encouraged to exercise God's gift of logic in the evaluation not only of the two worldviews, Naturalism and Christian Theism, but to reflect on the axioms, beliefs, or presuppositions of his or her own worldview. "As a person thinks, so is he."