>>614930
I haven't read that book, I'll check it out. But, I'll share my 2 cents. My conversion story is directly a consequence of this!
Yes, I came to Catholicism the LONG way around. Atheist, but as I learned more about logic (computer science), I just couldn't shake the First Mover argument. One way or another, you need SOME trancendental "thing" in your scheme to set the whole thing in motion. An iterative function (and if the Church-Turing thesis is correct, ultimately everything must be representable as a single function) still requires an initial state. Yes, yes, in a "pure" sense a function just is - but try booting your PC up with that and see how far it gets.
I'd wanted to actually program a Minecraft-esque sandbox game, but using cellular automata for particles. And yeah, I wanted to basically have EVERYTHING procedurally generated. Should be easy, I thought. In the course of things, it occurred to me (jokingly, this was 10 years ago before anyone took the simulation hypothesis seriously) that if I succeeded I was the God of my own universe, and my code was an expression of my Logos. Ha. Ha.
Anyway, it turned out to be computationally infeasible. But it gnawed at me (I was a real typical Internet edgelord) - the only way I could make even my toy universe was via a Creator that was (relative to its creation) an omnipotent and omniscient being. I even realised it partly solved the problem of evil - although omnipotent in regards to my code, if I intervene in the operation of it (due to the halting problem) I can introduce changes that can be catestrophic. I'm essentially my own limiting factor - unless I halt the process (destroy my little universe ) I'm intrinsically bound in my interactions with it due to my original design. In Christian terms, God's fiat is absolute - perfect justice and Gods will can't be escaped and if something went seriously wrong, the situation has to play itself out. Even when He hates what happens - it must continue. I doubt that it's exactly how it works, but by way of analogy yeah IMO God would basically "crash" Creation if he worked against his own design. And since that can't happen he has to work in more subtle ways, guide Creation back on course, maybe even a "hotpatch" in the form of Himself entering it and sacrificing himself.
So I did more research in the usual Atheist sources, thinking that I must have got something VERY wrong. No answer, they just ridicule such lines of reasoning and dismiss them out of hand. For all the arrogance of Fedora bros about "logic", it's all post-facto hand waving. And once I read Godel again, I realised that there was NO conceivable program I could write that'd be able to somehow bootstrap itself up from nothing without my setting it in motion.
I did check out alternatives - was big in Buddhist meditation for a long time. Read a bunch of Pagan and Occultist books, researched Islam, Bahai, Honduism etc. Western philosophy was often a lot of wank IMO, although I did really like Alfred North Whitehead.
Finally I happened to read CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. I realised that the conclusion was inescapable - what was good in every other religion, was in Christianity already. And for some reason I actually found CS Lewis moral argument for God convincing.
Increasingly I found the best answers to all my questions were from the Catholic Church. The nature of the soul, how we can reconcile Faith with Reason, all the deep exegesis from centuries of thinkers. Amazing! And I ended up at the Vatican on holiday - a friend of ours works there and we gota behind the scenes tour. I was blown away.
It was still almosy like a second conversion - after I got back home I spent a lot of time reading everytying I could and praying to God about if the Church really was still the right place. Finally, my wife out of the blue suggested we go check out the local parish Church - she was tired of the Protestants and suddenly kept having an urge to go to the more traditional one. We did the RCIA, and here I am.
So…..the link IMO is in the nature of Logic itself. Christ is the Logos after all - and the Word created the universe. Despite Gnostics etc blowing it out of proportion into full blown Platonic number worship, I still think there's a connection there (not that it's literally code or math - but analogous to it in some way). The book of nature is our teacher too, as the scholastics taught. I'd suggest you check out what St Acquinas and various Thomists had to say for a good orthodox grounding in the topic.
On the side of philosophers (but not necessarily Catholic), try Whitehead, Leibniz - and even Newton! My only caution is that you don't mistake the map for the territory - while the parallels are interesting, no running off and deciding to worship numbers or anything eh?
God be with you OP.