I really enjoyed reading your book. There were many notable thoughts, like the spot-on assessment of evolutionary psychology. But what impressed me most was your ability to take a complex subject and make it as simple as possible but not simpler. That has been my struggle. It’s not easy to weave between variables. That particular talent is unique, and you use it well.

– Ron Marks, founder of The Politically Homeless Society

I would love to see Making Sense of Brief Lives on the syllabus for all first year seminary students. Smoke does readers a service by repeatedly focusing attention on matters of utmost existential relevance and providing clear and simple tools to address them. In doing so, Smoke is uncompromising in his honesty and merciless in assailing wishful thinking on all fronts. In an age when so many in our culture cannot muster the internal resources to reflect critically on their commitments, this is a call that needs to be made again and again. A supernaturalist account of religion is regularly examined in these pages. Like many students entering seminary, he has rightly discerned that the gods of religion are, without exception, human creations. There are a few classic ways that people respond to this realization. Smoke shows us the path of the nihilist. He feels compelled to drive the shock of existential abandonment from God’s death straight through the heart of all reality. There are other paths that people of radical honesty have open to them, even—capitalizing on Golgotha—quite Christian ones. I hope that someday Smoke finds one. Like a young Saint Augustine, he has much of true value to teach us.

– Alexander Blondeau, PhD in Systematic Theology

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Making Sense of Brief Lives, and see a kindred spirit when Smoke discusses free will and the idea of conscious experience as a simulation or fiction. “How can I then be certain of anything about the world beyond my mind? Ultimately I cannot.” I’m amazed Smoke packs so much into such a short manuscript. The notes deserve special attention. Overall a great read.

– Dr. Robert L. Taylor, author of The Deceptive Brain: Blame, Punishment, and the Illusion of Choice