The Mind of God
I recently read a book by physicist Paul Davies, The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning. I found it a refreshing contrast to scientific atheism, for instance Dawkins' The God Delusion. Davies argues from purely scientific and mathematical grounds that "the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact. There must, it seems to me, be a deeper level of explanation. Whether one wishes to call that deeper level "God" is a matter of taste and definition. Furthermore, I have come to the point of view that mind--i.e., conscious awareness of the world--is not a meaningless and incidental quirk of nature, but an absolutely fundamental facet of reality. That is not to say that we are the purpose for which the universe exists. Far from it. I do, however, believe that we human beings are built into the scheme of things in a very basic way."
The Mind of God (Penguin, 1992), p. 16.
I don't really have a scientific disposition. I love the big, crazy ideas of modern physics, and I can follow the arguments well enough (when I studied maths I could always understyand the proofs but rarely reproduce them.) This book also draws on theory of computing, which I studied and enjoyed at university. Davies mentions the Gnostics a couple of times--although he is not a religious person himself, he takes theology as theory as he does scientific cosmology. Yet even highly intelligent people trip over when they leave behind their familiar fields, and Davies is no exception. "... the position taken by the Christian Gnostics, who regarded matter as corrupt, and therefore as a product of the devil rather than God." p.43.
Well, this might describe the Bogomils or Cathars, but certainly not the ancient Gnostics, for whom the material world is typically a later stage brought into being by the fall of Sophia. Davies' Gnostics resemble an absolute dualism. Still, this is a minor quibble and I found the book stimulating and helped to diminish that slight yet nagging voice of rational nihilism that occasionally invades my head and heart.
The Mind of God (Penguin, 1992), p. 16.
I don't really have a scientific disposition. I love the big, crazy ideas of modern physics, and I can follow the arguments well enough (when I studied maths I could always understyand the proofs but rarely reproduce them.) This book also draws on theory of computing, which I studied and enjoyed at university. Davies mentions the Gnostics a couple of times--although he is not a religious person himself, he takes theology as theory as he does scientific cosmology. Yet even highly intelligent people trip over when they leave behind their familiar fields, and Davies is no exception. "... the position taken by the Christian Gnostics, who regarded matter as corrupt, and therefore as a product of the devil rather than God." p.43.
Well, this might describe the Bogomils or Cathars, but certainly not the ancient Gnostics, for whom the material world is typically a later stage brought into being by the fall of Sophia. Davies' Gnostics resemble an absolute dualism. Still, this is a minor quibble and I found the book stimulating and helped to diminish that slight yet nagging voice of rational nihilism that occasionally invades my head and heart.
posted by Andrew Phillip Smith at 2:27 AM
2 Comments:
I read that book many years ago but the only thing I really remember now - which absolutely fascinated me - is the discussion of God as a necessary being. As I recall he found the idea of a necessary being compelling but saw that it caused all sorts of philosophical problems for things like divine freedom (let alone human freedom) because a necessary being can only do what is necessary.
He wondered if God would need to have two poles, one pole was necessary being and the other pole was contingent. Looking at this now I wonder if he could have benefitted from using the mystical traditions (actually, perhaps he did and I don't remember). His God who is both necessary and contingent looks to me like the ineffable One who is Being and non-Being or who is Being and Becoming.
Hi Michael. Yes, he did refer to mysticism at the end of thr book. He relates experiences described by Fred Hoyle and Richard Feynman. They each experienced moments of inspiration or revelation a few times in their lives and this was followed by a sense of euphoria that lasted days. Kurt Goedel apparently used meditative techniques throuigh which he felt that he could directly experience mathematical objects. Davies doesn't draw any conclusions from these experiences but acknowledges the possibility of a direct perception of reality through mysticism.
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