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Tuesday, January 10, 2006

God's Debris

Anyone who ever wanted to check out Dilbert's deeper side should take a gander at God's Debris by Scott Adams. Actually, no Dilberts were harmed in the making of this "thought expirement wrapped inside a fictional story", but Scott's close association with his cubicle comic has apparently forced this book to go to free publishing in order to be read.


The synopsis?

Imagine that you meet a very old man who—you eventually realize—knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life—quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? God's Debris isn’t the final answer to the Big Questions. But it might be the most compelling vision of reality you will ever read. The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what’s wrong with the old man’s explanation of reality. Share the book with your smart friends then discuss it later while enjoying a beverage.

2 comments:

Thomas said...

Not to say that this means anything regarding his other published works, but Adams is also one of those crazy Intelligent Design kids. I'm not real likely to read his thought experiments, self-hynotized or not.

Josh said...

Fair enough, though from some of the snippets of the book it's not too surprising since Adams takes what could be a considered a decidedly Christian view of God and the Universe.

And honestly, ID as someone's personal explanation of tying their God to scientific constructs as actually OK with me. I have a problem with ID when the religious start acting blankly when people start pointing out that for their argument, God does actually have to be in the room.

In other words, if someone wants to believe in Creationism ... that's their thing. Just don't expect me to accept it as science because it's got a different name.

Scott's own words on ID, btw:

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/11/intelligent_des.html