One Thought

In God’s Debris, Dilbert-creator Scott Adams lays out what he calls a “thought experiment.” Adams frames the meat of his book–a long conversation–in a meager plotline: A delivery man comes to a house one day, gets no response to his knock, steps inside, and is greeted by an old man. The two have a long conversation that covers physics, metaphysics, God’s will, free will, religion, evolution, extra-sensory perception, and motivational psychology (not to mention the kitchen sink). The old man is presented as an oracle (of sorts), and the delivery man is there mainly to keep him talking.

Adams disavows the beliefs presented in God’s Debris, stating that the “thought experiment” is to discover where the old man goes wrong–where his beliefs make leaps that defy logic. I have a couple problems with this approach. First, Adams’ unwillingness to stand behind any of the views he presents feels like a cop-out–one wonders if he wrote the book, saw the obvious flaws in his (the old man’s) arguments, and then decided to publish it anyway with the disclaimer. I’m wary of an author who won’t put himself on the line.

Second, I don’t find Adams’ thought experiment particularly interesting. One should read any work skeptically, and a work making metaphysical claims deserves an especially close look. Would Adams’ thought experiment have been any different had he presented the old man’s views as his own? No–we would still read his work skeptically. Adams claims that the old man’s philosophy stems from the “skeptic’s creed”–that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one–but he gives no justification for this claim. It’s not at all clear that the explanations presented are simpler than the alternatives. Thus, the fact that the old man’s arguments are flawed says little about the validity of the skeptic’s creed.

The philosophy of God’s Debris does have its merits. The old man’s explanation of the universe’s origin, for instance, was novel to me. In short, the old man thinks that an all-powerful god–one he assumes exists–would find nothing challenging other than the prospect of destroying itself. The old man posits that this god did destroy itself in an explosion that created the universe. The universe is composed of tiny particles–”god’s dust”–whose motion is governed by “probability.” Though this probability is not explained very well, the old man thinks that it captures god’s will–events that god wants to happen are more likely to occur. According to the old man, god is using probability to rebuild itself.

If you’ve read much philosophy, you’re probably familiar with much of the ground God’s Debris covers. The old man presents oft-repeated arguments against “free will,” for example. He also pokes holes in science, which, he points out, makes its own metaphysical assumptions. To Adams’ credit, his presentation is straightforward. Too many philosophers get bogged down in jargon and incomprehensible sentence structures, and I commend Adams for keeping things simple.

Is God’s Debris worth reading? If you are new to the topics it presents, I think so. It will get you thinking about some interesting questions. The philosopher in me can’t help but wish that Adams had taken his task more seriously and presented arguments that he could stand behind. Nevertheless, the book does present difficult ideas straightforwardly, and some of its content was new to me.