"I know of no religious writer more pertinent to our time." - T. S. Eliot, Introduction to Pensees "Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true," declared Pascal in his Pensées. "The cure for this," he explained, "is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is." Motivated by the 17th-century view of the supremacy of human reason, Pascal (1623-62) had intended to write an ambitious apologia for Christianity, in which he argued the inability of reason to address metaphysical problems. His untimely death prevented his completion of the work, but the fragments published posthumously in 1670 form a vital part of religious and philosophical literature. Essential reading for students of history, philosophy, and theology, the Pensees remain among the liveliest and most eloquent defenses of Christianity ever written. AUTHOR: French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–62) laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities. His inventions and discoveries, which included an early version of the calculator, promoted developments in geometry, physics, and computer science and influenced latter-day thinkers such as Newton and Leibniz.