Book Review No.19 – God’s Debris by Scott Adams

Two weeks back, I was chatting with one of my friends, online, when he mentioned that he read a book called God’s Debris and liked it very much. A few hours later, another friend of mine, came online and mentioned the same book! It is extremely rare that I get a book recommendation of the same book, by two different people (who don’t know each other) within a few hours! It has never happened to me before! When I mentioned this to my second friend, he gave a philosophical twist to it by asking me whether I believed in coincidences and suggesting that probably this coincidence had a deeper meaning.
 
‘God’s Debris’ was lying unread on my ‘To Be Read’ pile till yesterday evening, when I thought I will give it the attention it deserved. It was a short book (around 144 pages), it had big fonts and it was a digital copy. I haven’t read a whole book on a computer before and so I thought it will be interesting to find out how the experience was. I was also intrigued to find out what was there in the book to appeal to two young people. I finished reading the book today and here is my review.
 
Summary of the book
 
Here is a description of the book from Amazon.com.

Scott Adams, creator of the popular comic strip “Dilbert,” has written a modern-day parable about a young man and an unlikely mentor. God’s Debris starts with a young deliveryman trying to hand over a package to a man with a San Francisco address. But delivering the package to this old man proves to be as difficult as trying to understand the meaning of God.

“It’s for you,” the old man tells the narrator, gesturing to the package.
“What’s in the package?” the narrator asks.
“It’s the answer to your question.”
“I wasn’t expecting any answers,” the deliveryman admits.

About this time, the narrator begins to realize that he’s not dealing with a feeble-minded old man; he’s dealing with a situation that could alter his life. The sincerity and metaphysical complexity of this fable will surprise those who expect comedy, but Adams is following a tradition set by such writers as Dan Millman (‘Way of the Peaceful Warrior’) and Richard Bach (‘Illusions’). As in many parables that have come before, the deliveryman learns the meaning of life from an illusive mentor who seems to arise from a wrinkle in time. The cleverness of the God’s Debris concept is original and bound to leave readers pondering some altered definitions of God, the universe, and just about everything else.

What I think
 
‘God’s Debris’ is an interesting experiment by Scott Adams and follows the tradition set by Dan Millman (‘Way of the Peaceful Warrior’) and Richard Bach (‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’, ‘Illusions’) (as mentioned in the Amazon.com description) and others writers like Paulo Coelho (‘The Alchemist’), Mitch Albom (‘Tuesdays with Morrie’), Antoine de St.Exupery (‘The Little Prince’) and others. I could even see shades of Daniel Quinn’s ‘Ishmael’ in the book. It discusses science, relgion, philosophy and God and delves into questions like the meaning of life and the reconciling of contradictions between science and religion. It is structured as a conversation between a master and a potential disciple. The book takes the reader on an interesting journey into religion (about different religions and how they differ from each other and meditating on which one could be the true one) and science – the whole works starting from Gravity to Einstein’s relativity to fundamental particles, the particle and wave nature of light, Quantum Mechanics and even touches on String Theory. It also touches on Zeno’s Paradox which Douglas Hofstadter had illustrated so well in his book ‘Godel, Escher and Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid’. In the second part of the book, the character who plays the role of the master, gives his own understanding of how and why the universe is as it is today and how things should work.
 
After reading the book, I could appreciate the fascination that young people seem to have for it. When I was in my late teens, I read a religious pamphlet called ‘Does God Exist?’. It influenced my impressionable mind in a very fundamental way. I can imagine how my reading experience would have been if I had read ‘God’s Debris’ then – I think it would have made an indelible impression on me.
 
I think that most of us would have thought about the topics that the book discusses – religion, science, God and the meaning of life. The book gives its own answer to these questions. I think that there are no definitive answers to these questions, and each of us has to think and meditate on these questions and find own personal answer to it, which is convincing to us, and learn to live with the contradictions which arise out of our thinking. One of the interesting passages I read on this topic was from a Russian book called ‘A Hero of Our Time’ by Mikhail Lermontov. It goes like this.

Stars shone calmly in the deep blue sky, and I was amused to think that there were once wise men who imagined the stars took part in men’s petty squabbles over a patch of land or some imagined rights. While in fact these lamps, which they supposed had been lit for the sole purpose of shining down on their battles and triumphs, still burn on as bright as ever, while they, with all their passions and hopes, have long since vanished, like a fire lit by some carefree traveller at the edge of a forest. Yet what strength they derived from this certainty that the heavens with all their countless hosts looked down on them in silent, but never-failing sympathy. And we, their pitiful descendants, drift through the world without beliefs or pride, without pleasure or fear, except that instinctive dread that grips us when we think of our inevitable end. We can no longer make great sacrifices for the good of mankind, or even for our own happiness, because we know it is unattainable; and as our ancestors plunged on from illusion to illusion, so we drift indifferently from doubt to doubt. Only unlike them, we have no hope, nor even that indefinable but real sense of pleasure that is felt in any struggle, be it with men or with destiny.

I had an interesting discussion with one of my friends some time back on this topic (I hadn’t heard of God’s Debris then) and interestingly, I found that most of our ideas were similar. Even more interestingly, our conclusions from those similar ideas were different. I found that interesting, because I think both of us were positive, optimistic, educated, well-informed and well-read people. So, I think that the big questions are those for which each person has to find his / her own answers and the character of the master in Scott Adams book, gives his own answer to them.  
 
At the beginning of the book, Scott Adams says that the book is a thought experiment. He also says that he has used scientific facts and other ‘creative baloney’ which sounds like facts, in the book. Adams also says that the opinions expressed in the book are not his opinions or philosophical beliefs but those of the characters (it is an interesting get-out clause for him, to avoid controversy!).
 
On Reading a Digital Book
 
I found it interesting to read a book on my computer for the first time. I had a problem with my posture, because I had to sit in one position till I finished the book. But on the other hand, I felt that I read quite fast when compared to reading a hardback / paperback book. The pages just flitted by. It might be because when we read online, we don’t really think that a page is long – we probably think it is all one page. Or maybe the long hours spent across the years, reading documents on the computer and reading articles on the internet has increased my reading speed on the computer. I don’t know which of these is true. But reading the book on the computer didn’t have the romantic feel of holding a real book in hand, experiencing the pleasurable feel of the paper, enjoying the fragrance of the page and the rustle of the pages when we turn them and highlighting my favourite lines with a highlighting pen.   
 
Excerpts
 
I am giving below some interesting excerpts from the book, which will give you a flavour of the book.

If you work in the city long enough, it begins to deal with you on a personal level. Streets reveal their moods. Sometimes the signal lights love you. Sometimes they fight you. When you’re hunting for a new building, you hope the city is on your side. You have to use a little bit of thinking – you might call it the process of elimination – and you need a little bit of instinct, but not too much of either. If you think too hard, you overshoot your target and end up at the Pier or the Tenderloin. If you relax and let the city help, the destination does all the work for you. It was one of those days.
 
Some gray hair gathered above each ear and his posture was an ongoing conversation with gravity. He wasn’t old. He was ancient.
 
      “…but God is omnipotent. Being omnipotent means you can do anything you want. If God didn’t have free will, he wouldn’t be very omnipotent.”
“Indeed. And being omnipotent, God must be able to peer into his own future, to view it in all its perfect detail.”
      “Yeah, I know. You’re going to say that if he sees his own future, then his choices are predetermined. Or, if he can’t see the future, then he’s not omnipotent.”
      “Omnipotence is trickier than it seems,” he said.
 
“It is a human tendency to become what you attack. Skeptics attack irrational thinkers and in the process become irrational.”
 
At times I felt like a kitten lifted by the fold of skin on the back of my neck, helpless, safe, transported.

There are other interesting lines in the book, which deal with the core topic of the book. But I am not giving them here, because I don’t want to reduce your enjoyment when you read the book.
 
Where you can find the book
 
The book is available free on the internet (the original digital version – it is not pirated). If you would like to read it, you can download it from the publisher’s site at : http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/
 
Final Thoughts
 
‘God’s Debris’ is an unconventional writing experiment by Scott Adams. It is an interesting book. Most of us would have at some point in our lives, given a thought to the topics that the book talks about – science and religion and the meaning of life. It is a book which can spawn a lot of interesting conversation during lunch time, or while having a coffee or a drink.
 
If you like having interesting conversations on philosophical topics during lunch time, you can give this book a try. It might even help you grapple with the deeper questions of life.