#9 - God's Debris: A Thought Experiment by Scott Adams

#9 - God's Debris: A Thought Experiment by Scott Adams

“If you were God,” he said, “what would you want?”

For the ninth book in my quest to get to 52 books on the year, I read God's Debris: A Thought Experiment. This book is something I'd heard quite a bit about lately, and it is just a tiny little thing (only 132 pages and pretty decently sized print) so it fit perfectly as a transition into my next longer book. This book is written by Scott Adams. Yes, Dilbert Scott Adams - and no, it has nothing to do with cubicles nor is it funny in any way.

Simply put, this isn't a story or anything you can really classify, but it is really a series of questions designed to make you the reader sit up and question your reality. It's both designed to get people to more actively think about life as a whole, but also to get them to think about where the arguments laid out in this book are flawed. As Adams states in the introduction, "the target audience for God’s Debris is people who enjoy having their brains spun around inside their skulls," and he recommends that "for maximum enjoyment, share God’s Debris with a smart friend and then discuss it while enjoying a tasty beverage."

Well, I have a cup of coffee and I'm sharing it with all of you good folks.

The story is a simple one - a delivery man delivers a package to an old man, who claims the package is in fact for the delivery man himself. From that point on, the rest of the story is a conversation between the old man and the delivery man that essentially deconstructs the whole of the delivery man's reality. There are a lot of interesting ideas presented, many of which makes a shocking amount of sense, some of which make a shockingly little sense. However, the ideas are always interesting and it combines into a quick read that gives us a new way to think of God and our ability to change our destiny.

Many people claim this story is pretty basic philosophy, but to me it was a fresh perspective on the subject at hand. It's very difficult to review this book because it isn't so much a book as a device designed to present ideas. The story is a means to an end, and I think it really will work better as a discussion piece. Interested in discussing? Adams put the whole of the book in PDF form online for free. It's only an hour or two read - breeze through it and post your thoughts. I don't want to go into any details for fear of spoiling anything, but it's a worthy way to spend your time, I promise. It's worth it if only for the revelation of what exactly God's debris is.

If you'd like to read a detail that gets more in depth, check this one out here at the National Review.