God’s Debris
Scott Adams is a really cool guy, as evidenced by his being the creator of the very funny comic strip Dilbert, and his writing of the book God’s Debris, which is not a comic book. It is indeed a book book.
In addition to being a book book, it is a eBook that you can get for $0.00. All you need to do is download it.
The Wikipedia article on the book does a good job of summing it up:
God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment is a 2001 novella by Dilbert creator Scott Adams.God’s Debris 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”, hence the title.
The book has a interesting theory about levels of human consciousness which I find very interesting. It goes like this…
- Level 1: Consciousness at birth: pure innocence, self-awareness.
- Level 2: Awareness of others, and acceptance of authority (a belief system).
- Level 3: Awareness that some beliefs may be wrong, but not which ones.
- Level 4: Skepticism and adoption of scientific method.
- Level 5: Avatar level, understanding that the mind is a delusion-generating machine, and that science is another belief system, although a useful one.
In the intro to the book Adams states:
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 contend that it is nonfiction because the opinions and philosophies of the characters might have lasting impact on the reader.The story contains no violence, no sexual content, and no offensive language. But the ideas expressed by the characters are inappropriate for young minds. People under the age of fourteen should not read it.
The target audience for God’s Debris is people who enjoy having their brains spun around inside their skulls.
I think the book should be required reading in schools.
-N
