God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

by Scott Adams

Paperback, 2004

Status

Available

Call number

110

Series

The Avatar (1)

Collections

Popular Science, Digital Library

Publication

Andrews McMeel Publishing (2004), Paperback, 144 pages

Description

God's Debris is the first non-Dilbert, non-humor book by best-selling author Scott Adams. Adams describes God's Debris as a thought experiment wrapped in a story. It's designed to make your brain spin around inside your skull. 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? You may not find the final answer to the big question, but God's Debris might provide 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. It has no violence or sex, but the ideas are powerful and not appropriate for readers under fourteen.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Devil_llama

The author announces, without a trace of modesty, that the ideas in this book will cause your head to spin. He obviously believes he has created some sort of new breakthrough in thinking. In reality, it's an insipid mixture of New Age, Eastern mysticism, quantum flapdoodle, and a totally

superficial reading of sources that he chooses to consider scientific (though it's tough to know, since he doesn't reference where he gets his scientific information; one would think it might be from that awful movie, What the Bleep do We Know?, except this book came out earlier than that movie). The philosophy is nothing particularly new, and extremely unsophisticated, like that of a high school boy who has just been introduced to a new idea and believes himself the master of it. The science ranges from trivial to correct to half correct to flat out wrong; he doesn't appear to understand much of it at all, but presents it as though he has a better comprehension than science itself. He presents a series of aphorisms for right living toward the end that he apparently believes are deep wisdom, but are really just the sort of 1980s psychobabble twaddle that was ubiquitous on greeting cards and in self-help books. The characters aren't developed at all; they are just a mechanism for spouting a lot of philosophy in a simplistic, self-edifying way, and the extreme age of one of the characters is a transparent ruse for making his every utterance seem extremely profound. It doesn't work. In fact, the level of profundity in this particular book brings to mind a bit of faux wisdom concocted solely for the purpose of being faux wisdom - "An owl in a bag troubles no man." In short, it sounds much more important than it really is. About the only thing in the book that I found worthy of giving the half star I gave it was his discussion of probability theory, which was actually decent (possibly because he has an MBA). His discussion of evolution is ludicrous and shows an extreme lack of understanding of this subject; his arguments are arguing against a total straw man, and not evolutionary theory at all. Statements like "How would the first of a new species find a mate?" - the sort of question creationists throw out in the mistaken smug assertion that they will stump all scientists. They usually believe they have when the scientist walks away with a stunned look on their face, not realizing said scientist is thinking "How can I possibly conduct a conversation with this person?" The book is chock full of such straw men, as well as a priori reasoning, and smug assertions that have no logical argumentation, no evidence, and no bearing on reality in many cases. This reads like a kindergarten "take that" challenge thrown out to philosophers and scientists alike, most of whom will never bother to answer him, because the time it would take would not be worth the result when they encounter the smug hard-headed assurances that there is a "fifth level" at which one person exists who realizes that everyone else is wrong (and it isn't too hard to realize that, in spite of his assertions at the beginning of the book, this is the role that Adams sees for himself). In short, a lame, trite, and banal work of nonsense. I'm only glad it's short, so I didn't waste more than 2 hours of my life on this tripe.

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LibraryThing member AlexTheHunn

While ostensibly departing from his openly humorous and subtly philosophical Dilbert comic strip, Adams in effect reverses modalities and becomes openly philosophical and subtly humor in this work. Adams himself states there is a flaw in his logic. There are probably many, yet as a whole this book

works well as a vehicle for a very practical approach to living in peace, harmony, and tolerance.

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LibraryThing member HutcH

God's Debris is a short story written by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame as, defined accurately in the title, a thought experiment. Scott does an excellent job in this philosophical work putting ideas, some old and some new, together in a new way.

It's a great read if you don't mind someone challenging

the status quo. I recommend this book to those looking for something a bit different.

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LibraryThing member hjjugovic

I read this free download on the recommendation of another LibraryThing member (Thanks, Leah!) and really enjoyed it. It is very short and thought provoking. There isn't much of a plot (it really is a thought experiment) but is never boring. It's also not for everyone - if you are religious and

easily offended by ideas contrary to your own, walk away. The most intriguing bit is the author's own admission that some of the ideas are legitimate scientific or philosphical principals and some are just plain made up. Part of the experiment is to see if you can tell the difference. I admit some of them have me stumped! Either way, it's really fun to challenge your assumptions, think in a different way, and ponder the preposterous. Recommended!

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LibraryThing member monototo

some of the chapters were gold. Adams warns that the all-knowing character in the book makes some scientific fallacies which is good in a sense, it keep the reader on their toes and makes them analyse everything. However, the misconceptions regarding the limitations of evolution are worrying,

there's already enough misinformation surrounding this subject. The analogy between living evolution and the evolution of cookware was however clever and well presented.

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LibraryThing member millsge

If you ever enjoyed Dilbert, do yourself a favor and thank the man who did so much to make cubicle life a little more bearable by giving this short and very original book a chance. Plato would have loved (or perhaps loves) it - I'm sure God does.

LibraryThing member whynaut

This is a book that completely opened up my brain when I was thirteen years old. It was more than teaching me something new, it was teaching me that things could be new; that the world could be vastly different from what my teachers were telling me or what I could perceive with my senses. If you

need a good brain-jarring or just trying to mix the world up you should read this book.

Though looking back at it now from much older eyes (ten years later) the book it more cute and nostalgic than anything else.

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LibraryThing member revslick

Scott must have been reading The Shack and tripping on some major opiates when he wrote this. Short, but thought provoking and similar to Michael Dowd's stuff on Evolutionary religion.

LibraryThing member EAG

I was surprised to run across a non-fiction work by the creator of Dilbert, especially one that set out to examine weighty issues about the meaning of life, the universe and everything in just over 100 pages. I was hesitant to get it at first, especially since the book’s set-up was eerily similar

to Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael---a cringe-worthy example of philosophy ‘lite’ if ever there was one. Fortunately there are no telepathic gorillas here. The Socratic dialogue between the two main characters can be irritating at times; however, it serves its purpose well. And while he does have a definite philosophic stance (notwithstanding his disclaimers), Scott is less interested in providing answers to the key issues in the science vs. religion debates than he is in challenging people to think more critically about the big questions in life. God's Debris is an unexpected delight: chock-full of clever and thought-provoking metaphors, it is a quirky "thought-experiment" worth engaging in.

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LibraryThing member MomsterBookworm

From the author of 'Dilbert', a book of very convoluted ideas / philosophies, which for the most part, are not expanded upon -- merely stated matter-of-factly. It does seem to ask of the reader to suspend the impulse to debate (the book's other central character already takes on that role), and to

be engaged in thought processes that seem to revolve around semantics and vagaries. In its defense, the author states on the onset that: "The target audience for 'God's Debris' is people who enjoy having their brains spun around inside their skulls.".

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LibraryThing member lkernagh

As per the introduction, "God's Debris doesn't fit into normal publishing cubbyholes. There is even disagreement about whether the material is fiction or nonfiction. I contend that it is fiction because the characters don't exist. Some people content that it is nonfiction because the opinions and

philosophies of the characters might have lasting impact on the reader." My local library categorizes this one as nonfiction, but I can see how a fiction/nonfiction disagreement could occur. The premise is simplicity itself: A delivery man delivers a parcel to a new address, signature required. When he receives no answer at the door, but find the door unlocked, he enters the home and encounters a wizened old man wrapped in a blanket warming himself by a fire in the fireplace. The book is the conversation between the old man and the delivery man, on topics lofty and diverse enough to make my head spin. In essence, the take-away for contemplation is that the human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth; that science is a belief system, not unlike religion, albeit a useful one and that probability is the inevitable recombination of God's consciousness and the best way to understand the universe. A very simplistic summation of a compact little book packed full of everything from free will, reincarnation, ESP, pattern recognition, willpower and affirmations. Some of the 'conversation' tends to involve a bit of circular reasoning that goes nowhere but overall, I found this one to give me something to think about. I have already placed a hold at the library for the sequel, The Religion War.

A short, and at a times, thought-provoking read.

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LibraryThing member Bart_Leahy

This was a weird one. Sort of like what Carlos Castaneda would write if he hung around with the physics club for too long.

LibraryThing member sjh4255

From the writer of Dilbert... but not funny... Very interesting ideas, one per chapter that really gets your mind thinking. I have read about some of these before, but this book throws them all together to explain and offer alternative views that exist today. Definitely a good read which will have

you thinking twice about the world and universe around us.

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LibraryThing member Al-G

A very interesting and thought provoking work. Scott Adams is the author of Dilbert, but this book is not that. The book explores a wide range of topics relating to philosophy, physics, and understandings of God. If you like philosophy, ethics, or theology and read the book with an open mind you

will find plenty of gris for the mill. I found it fascinating and an opportunity for thoughtful introspection.

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Original publication date

2001

Local notes

Espouses a philosophy based on the idea that the simplest explanation tends to be the best (a corruption of Occam's Razor). It surmises that an omnipotent God annihilated himself in the Big Bang, because an omniscient God would already know everything possible except his own lack of existence, and exists now as the smallest units of matter and the law of probability, or "God's debris".