by Scott Adams
God's Debris
Scott Adams
Andrews McMeel Publishing and Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strips and #1 best-selling author of Dilbert humor books, have agreed to publish Mr. Adams' new project called God's Debris: A Thought Experiment. God's Debris is Scott's first non-Dilbert, non-humor effort. The author describes the book as "a thought experiment wrapped in a story. It's designed to make your brain spin around inside your skull." Some content of the book is nonfiction because the opinions and philosophies of the characters might have lasting impact on the reader. Others believe it is fiction because the characters don't exist.
Imagine that you meet a very old man who - you eventually realize - knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life: quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability -- in a way so simple, so novel and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? God's Debris isn't the final answer to the Big Questions. But it might be the most compelling vision of reality you will ever read. The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what's wrong with the old man's explanation of reality. Share the book with your smart friends then discuss it later while enjoying a beverage.
The book was initially offered to the public as an e-book, and the book has since become the #1 best-selling e-book on the planet. Because of the e-book offering, the Internet is buzzing with comments from the book's fans.
-- Amazon.com
Scott Adams
God’s Debris
A Thought Experiment
Introduction
This is not a Dilbert book. It contains no humor. I call it a 132-page thought experiment wrapped in a fictional story. I’ll explain the thought experiment part later.
God’s Debris doesn’t fit into normal publishing cubbyholes. There is even disagreement about whether the material is fiction or nonfiction. I contend that it is fiction because the characters don’t exist. Some people contend that it is nonfiction because the opinions and philosophies of the characters might have lasting impact on the reader.
The story contains no violence, no sexual content, and no offensive language. But the ideas expressed by the characters are inappropriate for young minds. People under the age of fourteen should not read it.
The target audience for God’s Debris is people who enjoy having their brains spun around inside their skulls. After a certain age most people are uncomfortable with new ideas. That certain age varies by person, but if you’re over fifty-five (mentally) you probably won’t enjoy this thought experiment. If you’re eighty going on thirty-five, you might like it. If you’re twenty-three, your odds of liking it are very good.
The story’s central character has a view about God that you’ve probably never heard before. If you think you would be offended by a fictional character’s untraditional view of God, please don’t read this.
The opinions and philosophies expressed by the characters are not my own, except by coincidence in a few spots not worth mentioning. Please don’t write me with passionate explanations of why my views are wrong. You won’t discover my opinions by reading my fiction.
The central character in God’s Debris knows everything. Literally everything. This presented a challenge to me as a writer. When you consider all of the things that can be known, I don’t know much. My solution was to create smart-sounding answers using the skeptic’s creed:
The simplest explanation is usually right.
My experience tells me that in this complicated world the simplest explanation is usually dead wrong. But I’ve noticed that the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any complicated explanation could hope to be. That’s good enough for my purposes here.
The simplest-explanation approach turned out to be more provocative than I expected. The simplest explanations for the Big Questions ended up connecting paths that don’t normally get connected. The description of reality in God’s Debris isn’t true, as far as I know, but it’s oddly compelling. Therein lies the thought experiment:
Try to figure out what’s wrong with the simplest explanations.
The central character states a number of scientific “facts.” Some of his weirdest statements are consistent with what scientists generally believe. Some of what he says is creative baloney designed to sound true. See if you can tell the difference.
You might love this thought experiment wrapped in a story. Or you might hate it. But you won’t easily get it out of your mind. For maximum enjoyment, share God’s Debris with a smart friend and then discuss it while enjoying a tasty beverage.
The Package
The rain made everything sound different—the engine of my delivery van, the traffic as it rolled by on a film of fallen clouds, the occasional dull honk. I didn’t have a great job, but it wasn’t bad, either. I knew the city so well that I could lose myself in thought and still do the work, still get paid, still have plenty of time for myself. When you’re inside your own head, the travel time between buildings evaporates. It’s as if I could vanish from one stop and reappear at the next.
My story begins on a day I delivered to a place I’d never been. That’s usually a fun challenge. There’s a certain satisfaction when you find a new place without using the map. Rookies use maps.
If you work in the city long enough, it begins to deal with you on a personal level. Streets reveal their moods. Sometimes the signal lights love you. Sometimes they fight you. When you’re hunting for a new building, you hope the city is on your side. You have to use a little bit of thinking— you might call it the process of elimination—and you need a little bit of instinct, but not too much of either. If you think too hard, you overshoot your target and end up at the Pier or the Tenderloin. If you relax and let the city help, the destination does all the work for you. It was one of those days.
It’s amazing how many times you can travel the same route without noticing a particular sign. Then when you’re looking for it, there it is. Universe Avenue. I would have sworn it wasn’t there a day ago, but I knew it didn’t work that way.
It was a scruffy package, barely up to company standards. I calculated the distance from my van to the doorway and decided the packing material could handle the moisture. On behalf of the package and myself, I surrendered to the rain.
This delivery required a signature. Those were the best kind. I could talk to people without any awkward lulls in the conversation. I liked people, but I didn’t feel comfortable chatting unless there was a reason. A delivery was a good excuse for some shallow interaction. People were happy to see me and I was never at a loss for words. I’d say, “Sign on this line,” and they’d say, “Thank you.” We’d exchange some meaningless wishes and I’d be off. That’s how it was supposed to work.
I walked up the four steps to the ornate wooden door and pressed the doorbell. A muffled bing-bong filled the interior and leaked out the cracks of the doorjamb.
Delivery people don’t like to leave the little yellow note, a confession of delivery failure. It means a do-over. I liked to do my work once. I liked my tasks to have beginnings and ends. As a rule of thumb, almost any customer can get to the front door in about a minute. But I usually waited two, in case someone was indisposed or having trouble walking. Two minutes is an eternity when you’re standing under a doorway on a rainy San Francisco afternoon.
Rookies wear jackets.
Two minutes passed. The company’s rules said I couldn’t try the doorknob. They were emphatic about that.
Ah, rules.
The Old Man
The oversized knob offered no resistance as it turned on its oiled core. I was no longer surprised to find unlocked doors in the c
ity. Maybe at some subconscious level we don’t believe we need protection from our own species.
I figured I would leave the package inside the door and sign the customer’s name. I had signed for customers before; no one had complained yet. It was a firing offense, but that only happened if you got caught.
Inside I could see a long, dark hallway with red faux– textured walls lined with large, illuminated paintings. At the end was a half-opened door to a room that hosted a flickering light. Someone was home and should have heard the doorbell. I didn’t like the look of it. Occasionally you read about an elderly person who dies alone and no one knows about it for weeks. My mind went there. I stepped inside and closed the door, enjoying the warmth, deciding what to do next.
“Hello!” I said in my professional voice, hoping it sounded nonthreatening. I shuffled my way down the hall, noticing that the art looked original. Someone had money. Lots.
The source of the uneven light was a huge stone fireplace. I entered the room, not sure why I was being quiet. Somehow the room was both simple and overwhelming. It was half fire– washed color, half black, brilliantly appointed with antique wooden furniture, elaborate patterned walls, and wood floors. My pupils enlarged to tease out the shadows.
An old man’s voice rose from the texture. “I’ve been expecting you.”
I was startled and feeling a bit guilty about letting myself in. It took me a minute to locate the source of the voice. It was as if it came from the room itself. Something moved and I noticed, on the far side of the fireplace, in a wooden rocker, a smallish form in a red plaid blanket, looking like a hastily rolled cigar. His tiny wrinkled hands held the blanket like button clasps. Two undersized feet in cloth slippers dangled from the wrap.
“Your door was unlocked,” I said, as if that were reason enough to let myself in. “I have a package.”
All I heard was the fire. I expected an answer. That’s how it’s supposed to work. When one person says something, the other is supposed to say something back. The old man wasn’t subscribing.
He stared at me and rocked, sizing me up, perhaps, or maybe he was lost in a replay. I had already said what I needed to say, so I stood silently for what seemed too long. I thought I saw the wake of a smile, or maybe it was a muscle tremor. He spoke in the deliberate manner of a man who had not used his voice in days and asked a strange question.
“If you toss a coin a thousand times, how often will it come up heads?”
The elderly are spooky when they degenerate into reflections of their younger selves. They say things that make sense on some grammatical level, but it’s not always connected to reality. I remembered my grandfather in his declining years, how he spoke in nonsequiturs. It was best to play along.
“About fifty percent of the time,” I answered before changing the subject. “I need a signature for this package.”
“Why?”
“Well,” I said, measuring how much information to include in my response, “the person who sent the package wants a signature. He needs confirmation that it got delivered.”
“I meant why does the coin come up heads fifty percent of the time?”
“I guess that’s because the coin weighs about the same on both sides, so there’s a fifty-fifty chance it will land on one side versus the other.” I tried to avoid sounding condescending. I wasn’t sure I succeeded.
“You haven’t answered why. You simply listed some facts.”
I saw what was going on. The old man pulls this trick question on anyone who comes within range. There had to be a punch line or clever answer, so I played along.
“What’s the answer?” I asked with all the artificial interest I could muster.
“The answer,” he said, “is that the question has no why.”
“You could say that about anything.”
“No,” he replied, in a manner that seemed suddenly coherent. “Every other question has an answer to why. Only probability is inexplicable.”
I waited a moment for the punch line, but it didn’t come. “That’s it?” I asked.
“It’s more than it seems.”
“I still need a signature.” I approached the old man and held out the clipboard, but he made no motion to take it. I could see him better now. His skin was stained and wrinkled but his eyes were strikingly clear. Some gray hair gathered above each ear and his posture was an ongoing conversation with gravity. He wasn’t old. He was ancient.
He gestured to the clipboard with his head. “You can sign it.”
In the delivery business we make lots of exceptions for the elderly, so I didn’t mind signing for him. I figured his hands or eyes weren’t working as well as he liked and I could save him the frustration of working the pen.
I read the name before forging.
Avatar. A–v–a–t–a–r.
“It’s for you,” he said.
“What’s for me?”
“The package.”
“I just deliver the packages,” I said. “My job is to bring them to you. It’s your package.”
“No, it’s yours.”
“Um, okay,” I said, planning my exit strategy. I figured I could leave the package in the hallway on the way out. The old man’s caretaker would find it.
“What’s in the package?” I asked. I hoped to get past an awkward moment.
“It’s the answer to your question.”
“I wasn’t expecting any answers.”
“I understand,” said the old man.
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t.
He continued, “Let me ask you a simple question: Did you deliver the package or did the package deliver you?”
By then I was a little annoyed with his cleverness, but admittedly engaged. I didn’t know the old man’s situation, but he wasn’t as feeble-minded as I’d first thought. I glanced at my watch. Almost lunchtime. I decided to see where this was heading.
“I delivered the package,” I answered. That seemed obvious enough.
“If the package had no address, would you have delivered it here?”
I said no.
“Then you would agree that delivering the package required the participation of the package. The package told you where to go.”
“I suppose that’s true, in a way. But it’s the least important part of the delivery. I did the driving and lifting and moving. That’s the important part.”
“How can one part be more important if each part is completely necessary?” he asked.
“Look,” I said, “I’m holding the package and I’m walking with it. That’s delivering. I’m delivering the package. That’s what I do. I’m a package-delivery guy.”
“That’s one way to look at it. Another way is that both you and the package got here at the same time. And that both of you were necessary. I say the package delivered you.”
There was a twisted logic to that interpretation, but I wasn’t willing to give in. “The difference is intention. If I leave this package here and go on my way, I think that settles the question of who delivered who.”
“Perhaps it would,” he said as he turned toward the warmth. “Would you mind throwing another log on the fire?”
I picked out a big one. The retiring embers celebrated its arrival. I had the brief impression that the log was glad to help, to do its part keeping the old man warm. It was a silly thought. I brushed off my hands and turned to leave.
“That chair is yours,” he said, gesturing to a wooden rocker next to his. I hadn’t noticed the second chair.
The old man’s face revealed a life of useful endeavor. I had a sense that he deserved companionship and I was happy to give some. My other choice involved a bag lunch and the back of my truck. Maybe there wasn’t any choice at all.
I settled into the rocking chair, letting its rhythm unwind me. It was profoundly relaxing. The room seemed more vivid now and vibrated with the personality of its master. The furniture was obviously designed for comfort. Everything in the room was made
of stone or wood or plant, mostly autumn colors. It was as if the room had sprung directly from the earth into the middle of San Francisco.
Your Free Will
“Do you believe in God?” the old man asked, as if we had known each other forever but had somehow neglected to discuss that one topic. I assumed he wanted reassurance that his departure from this life would be the beginning of something better. I gave a kind answer.
“There has to be a God,” I said. “Otherwise, none of us would be here.” It wasn’t much of a reason, but I figured he didn’t need more.
“Do you believe God is omnipotent and that people have free will?” he asked.
“That’s standard stuff for God. So, yeah.”
“If God is omnipotent, wouldn’t he know the future?”
“Sure.”
“If God knows what the future holds, then all our choices are already made, aren’t they? Free will must be an illusion.”
He was clever, but I wasn’t going to fall for that trap. “God lets us determine the future ourselves, using our free will,” I explained.
“Then you believe God doesn’t know the future?”
“I guess not,” I admitted. “But he must prefer not knowing.”
“So you agree that it would be impossible for God to know the future and grant humans free will?”
“I hadn’t thought about it before, but I guess that’s right. He must want us to find our own way, so he intentionally tries not to see the future.”
“For whose benefit does God withhold his power to determine the future?” he asked.
“Well, it must be for his own benefit, and ours, too,” I reasoned. “He wouldn’t have to settle for less.”
The old man pressed on. “Couldn’t God give humans the illusion of free will? We’d be just as happy as if we had actual free will, and God would retain his ability to see the future. Isn’t that a better solution for God than the one you suggested?”
