Book Review - "God's Debris" by Scott Adams

I had a headmaster at school who used to say, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." 

You don't get many book reviews written with that attitude.

When I say that a good thing about Scott Adam's "God's Debris" was it was short, that sounds like a joke. However, as the author states himself, the book is more of a thought experiment than a novel, and the length was probably well judged for its purpose. It also doesn't sound positive if I say the question that hung in my mind on finishing it was, "Why did Adams write this?"

It's not unusual for a writer to have a motive behind a piece of work beyond entertaining folk and getting paid for it, and it's clear the rationale behind "God's Debris" wasn't that. The entertainment part, anyway.

The story's premise is that the main character meets an old man who has apparently been supernaturally gifted with knowledge of everything, and shares it with the protagonist. All good so far, and the shared info mostly covers physics, metaphysics, and evolution, which are areas I am interested in and have a passing familiarity with. Not deep. Deeper, however, than the old man, who clearly hadn't been gifted even with the knowledge of the existence of Wikipedia. 

His views were interesting but, where they overlapped with things I actually knew, at least fifty percent blithering nonsense. I guess when you are provided with supernatural information, you don't need to read a book on the subject.

Was this deliberate? Oddly, according to Adams, yes.

The book comes with a preface from the author, which explains it is designed to spur debate on these subjects, that much of what the old guy says isn't right, and it is up to the reader to research what is and isn't wrong. Okay... That was in no way reflected in the story, which was entirely premised on the elderly oracle being genuinely omniscient.

So, that leaves three possibilities:

  • Everything is as Scott Adams suggests and the experiment is just strange.
  • He wrote a poorly researched novella in all honesty. Someone pointed out the blitheringness, and so he added the preface for cover rather than have to rewrite the whole thing. 
  • This experiment was a kind of 'lazy web' for famous people with a fanbase.

I feel drawn to the last explanation. 

What if you were a rich, successful author who pondered the meaning of life but didn't have much time for research. Let's call you, say, Scott Adams. You might dash out a "thought experiment" story with all your ponderings in it and let your fans make corrections, point you in the right direction and generally do all the hard work. The preface makes sure if you say anything particularly thick you have a get out of jail card. Smart. Almost Scott Adams smart.

If I were a fan, I'd suggest the old man (aka Scott Adams, if I'm not being clear enough on that point) read "On the Origin of Species", which is in fact a decent popular science book. A bit of EO Wilson (also readable) and some easily digestible stuff on mediaeval and enlightenment theology (maybe "The Best of All Possible Worlds" by Steven Nadler). He might also want to take a look at Richard Feynman's comments (was it him? Sounds like Feynman) on there being loads of models for physics, all of which seem to work, that form completely contradictory pictures of how the universe might operate. New models thus aren't guaranteed to tell us anything useful metaphysically - unless perhaps they make radical new predictions. I guess Adams is hoping his fans will find those.

In summary, if you are a huge Scott Adams fan, go ahead and read it. You'll at least get some view of the inside of his head. You may even feel inclined to do his homework for him ;-)

God's Debris by Scott Adams, Amazon UK 








 


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