God's Debris by Scott Adams

Most of us know Scott Adams from his Dilbert fame. However, I read this book, God's Debris, because my friend Jason had recommended The Religion Wars, which is actually the sequel to God's Debris, so I went out and bought the first book and read it first.

First off, it's somewhat sophomoric and written in a style I've come to recognize as "The Celestine Prophecy" style, which is a genre of writing grand ideas within the confines of a very simple story that is actually irrelevant to the bigger issues being discussed. Some examples of this style are: The Celestine Prophecy (which is kind of obvious from my theoretic name) by James Redfield, Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein, and The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. I'm assuming The Secret is similar, although I have not yet had the chance to read that one yet. So I may be wrong on that assumption. What makes this style unique (at least to me) is that the story is generic, but the actual text consists of a lot of people talking out complex, important issues that drive the general idea of what the author is trying to convey as his or her message.

Well, God's Debris is like that. It involves a deliveryman who brings a package to an old man who then begins to explain to the deliveryman the secrets of god and god's place in the universe. Rejecting gravity and Newtonian physics, the old man explains that everything in the universe exists more like Schrodinger's Cat, popping in and out of existence, causing movements when two items pop into each other's similar space, and that because God is omnipotent and omnipresent, he therefore has no free will because even God is preordained to achieve exactly a given future. However, the one thing God CAN do that is free will is to destroy himself, which he did. So the rest of the existence of the universe is us (being God's debris) building ourselves back to a coordinated set of networks so that we can reinvent God in his original image.

It's a little more detailed than that, but it was an interesting read. A few decades ago, I might have been blown away by the premise, but I found myself mildly amused instead. I don't know if that should make me feel good or concerned. I'd ask God, but he conveniently blew himself up, so I have to wait until we reconstruct the Internets so I can ask him.

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