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God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment was written by Scott Adams. It was a fictional story that would, as the author claimed, “make your brain spin around inside your skull.” The story has only two characters in it; a very old man named Avatar and an unnamed postal worker that delivers Avatar a package one day. When the postal worker finds Avatar in his house as he delivers the package, Avatar asks the postal worker a question that starts a long conversation about God and other life topics such as relationships, free-will, genuine belief, and science. His task was to create a novel so simple that all of these things would fit together and make perfect sense just as our course had tried to integrate science and religion in such a way that talking about them one realized there was no conflict between them. The thought experiment was this: try to figure out what was wrong with Avatar’s explanation of reality. Right away the author gives the sense that Avatar knows everything there is to know in the world. Thus, in using what has been learned in our course, my task was to find out what, if anything was wrong with the old man’s explanation of reality. A large portion of the text focuses on an elaborate system of logic in order to provide a way for God to exist. Already it seemed like the author was straying far from what our course had taught us about God as a construct of the mind rather than a being that existed. However, many parts of the text support what we think. The way in which he brings about the discussion is much different. For example, one of the first things Avatar asks the postal worker after having asked if he believed in God was if God had free will. The postal worker answered, “Obviously he does.” Avatar then went on to explain that being omnipotent, as everyone believes an actual God-being must be, God could do anything He wanted. Thus, being omnipotent, God must be able to peer into His own future. However, logic would follow that if He sees his own future, then His choices are predetermined. Or, if H can’t see the future, then He lacks omnipotence. Immediately from this predetermination conversation the postal worker comes to the conclusion that Avatar is an atheist and that science has all the answers and religious people are just deluding themselves. This is where the text starts to show a real grounding in postmodern thought. The old man puts forth an explanation of science using magnets as an example much in the way our course used the law of gravity to prove that objectivistic people want to give existence to their beliefs if it explains their reality sufficiently. The old man said, “If you hold two magnets near each other, they are attracted.
Approximate Word count = 1875
Approximate Pages = 7.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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