"A God That Could Be Real" doesn't seem very real

After spending half an hour or so perusing articles about, and reviews of, a book called "A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet," I've pretty much concluded that...

This God doesn't strike me as potentially real enough to buy what Nancy Abrams wrote.

But I'll give her credit for this: creativity, thought-provoking'ness, poetic prose, and a semi-gallant attempt to explain a God that is compatible with modern science.

Since I don't understand how her God is any different from the collective imagination of humanity, I don't feel like I can explain Abrams' conception of a divinity that doesn't exist as an objective reality, yet supposedly is real enough to be prayed to.

So I'll just point to what I found interesting and intriguing, though not quite enough to buy the book. (I might change my mind, though.) 

I started out reading a Salon piece by Abrams, "You're praying to the wrong God: What organized religion gets wrong about prayer."

We have learned from the evangelicals in Luhrmann’s study that if we are motivated enough, it’s possible to train our minds to experience whatever we believe is real. What if we directed toward the real universe and the emerging God even a fraction of the effort that millions of religious people make every day to experience the presence of their image of God?

Then I checked out the book's Amazon listing, focusing on the reader reviews. Here's part of a negative one.

This is embarrassingly bad. I had hoped that this might deserve an in-depth critique, but such aspiration vanished in the first 40 pages. PZ Myers has sliced and diced this pretty effectively over at his blog (Pharyngula), so I'll be brief. I skipped a bit, so I apologize for any errors.

The author -- an atheist, or at least an apatheist -- suffers from an eating disorder, and is impressed by the fact that in a self-help group that she joins, the people who put their trust in a "higher power" seem to do well. Rather than wondering about the psychosocial aspects of this observation, she feels compelled to find out if there's any natural phenomenon which would fit that description. She hypothesizes that perhaps there is some entity that is "emergent" from human consciousness, and opines that such an entity might be "worthy" of the term "god".

Now she provides no evidence for the existence of such an entity, nor does she attempt to explain what "emergence" might involve. She seems to view emergence as a mysterious process that requires no explanation -- a bit like the Gaia hypothesis, or some of Deepak Chopra's quantum nonsense.

Naturally I then had to read how PZ Myers "sliced and diced" A God That Could Be Real.

A song that could be silent. An ocean that could be dry. How about a book that could be nothing but deepities? That last one exists: it’s called A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet by Nancy Ellen Abrams, and it’s one of the more empty-headed collections of glib clap-trap I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s also really hard to describe, because the contents are so slippery.

...In other words, she recognizes that there is no good reason and no respectable evidence for believing in any of the existing religions, but she really, really wants to keep believing, so she’s going to go looking for a hook to hang the label “God” on. I could have spared her the effort of writing a whole book on this nonsense: get a sharpie and a piece of cardboard, write GOD on it, and then tape it on some random object that will then become the focus of your reverence. It’s easy, and just as useful.

I looked for a cogent review of the book, but couldn't find one. A Publisher's Weekly piece was more descriptive than review'y. 

Abrams, a lawyer and coauthor of books on cosmology (The New Universe and the Human Future), had long-standing disdain for organized religion and oversimplified approaches to faith and God. But a personal crisis with an eating disorder prompted her to deeply rethink her views about God and religion.

She came to understand God as something consistent with what is real in the universe. “God persists and always will because it’s a fundamental characteristic of the connection between ourselves and the universe,” Abrams writes.

She argues that God emerges in the world through the human mind and that humans have the responsibility to create a better world for themselves and future generations. She urges readers to pay close attention to climate change and the destruction of the planet.

Prayers are answered, she maintains, and yet no one is there to hear them. Much is possible for the planet and its people, she concludes, and she “want(s) to conserve this divine explosion of possibilities.” This book will appeal to scientifically minded readers and those intrigued by process theology.

Comments

[Nancy Ellen Abrams]

Reviewing a book that you have not read, and do not even possess, based on negative reviews by small-minded amateurs who are allergic to the word "God" and cannot see beyond their own unexamined definition of it, is an insult not only to your readers but to the entire purpose of book reviews. You do not mention that both Archbishop Desmond Tutu and cosmologist Paul Davies thought so highly of the book that they wrote forewords to it, so clearly it cannot be as empty as you say. I hope you will actually read it and open your mind to a radical re-definition of God that takes back this ancient concept from the prescientific traditionalists and refashions it for the dangerous future we are heading into, in which nothing could be more valuable to our species than common ground.

[Blogger Brian]

Nancy, I didn't claim that this blog post was a review. Obviously it couldn't be, since I haven't read your book. I just wanted to share some of what you and others have said about your book, so that readers of my blog could know about it.

Like I said, your book sounds creative and intriguing. It is the "emergent" hypothesis that mostly didn't make sense to me. I couldn't find an explanation of what you meant by this that seemed in harmony with a scientific understanding of the term.

But I readily admit that in your book, you may explain emergence of "God" in a way that is scientifically harmonious.

That said, I find it difficult to see how "God" is anything other than a concept produced by a multitude of human brains over many thousands of years. In this regard it is like any other concept: something that exists only in the minds of those able to conceive of it.

To my mind, this is a flimsy support for the reality of "God." Likewise, many people believe in astrology and derive great meaning and support from this pseudo-science. Their feelings about astrology are real, while astrology itself is not. Ditto with God, in my view.

[777]

I think because of my 'english'
I interpreted the title as :

If we could understand what God is,
SHE wouldn't be God

So I smiled and can't stop smiling
Hope , she ( Nancy, . not God ) has read the former chapter
which could give relieve

She is right : it was to much for a non-reader and a kind of calling names wasn't correct

I think I going to order because these one KM diameter , one mile heigh pillars of methane in Siberia are so underestimated
Also at the time of Al Gore's movie the sea level increase temperature increase was estimated1,5 ° C
It's now defined by Nasa to be 5,5 degree

777

[Appreciative Reader]

Dear Ms Abrams,

If a non-author may make so bold as to relate a story to a bona fide published author :

Long long ago in a land far far away, there reigned a king. The king was wise and kind and just, and also immensely powerful, so that all of his vast kingdom, the vastest and the richest in the world at that time, bowed to him in reverence. And this king was wise enough that he realized the essential lack of universality, indeed even the incongruity, of the primitive faith of his own forefathers, so that he made a clean break with the autocratic and often cruel policy of proselytizing that his own forebears believed in. He even did away with the “heathen tax” that universally applied at that time to the non-believers in the faith of the royal family, much to the consternation of the grand priests of his own faith, and much to the delight of his subjects at large. This king was universally revered as truly “great”, a greatness far in excess of the formidable heft of his sword.

So one day this king, who was also greatly learned, in addition to his many other accomplishments (legend has it that nothing for impossible for this great man ; and the one thing he could not do was to flap his arms and fly, but no doubt even that was only a matter of time), had a Royal Brainwave. A “Great” Brainwave. He sat down and (since the great man was not one to go so overboard with Royal hubris as to scorn the help of the learned), with the counsel and collaboration of the many learned scholars of his realm (belonging to different faiths, and learned in the lore of many different faiths), invented from scratch a brand new religion.

This religion included the “good” features of all religions thus far known, while shunning all the “bad” features of all of these religions. It included a great many humanitarian features. It embraced knowledge and science. Its gods and its principles were fully inclusive of whatever true knowledge was extant at that time. Its rituals were far more liberal and far less rigorous than those at that time extant. And it was fully inclusive, so that no man (or woman) may feel himself an outsider in this new faith.

“Great is our king, the greatest the world has even seen”, cried the masses and the learned elite alike. (The orthodox believers in the king’s faith were outraged, and the priests of the erstwhile Royal Faith started having fits of Divine Rage every Friday, with their faces taking on many wondrous hues as they writhed in impotent fury, but their voices were the loudest in proclaiming the Greatness of their Great king.)

And to this day that king is remembered for this greatness. Although his wonderful new religion is followed by none, and remembered by only a few (and that only because this great king had a great chronicler who was paid a great salary and who wrote a great book about the great king).

The moral of this story is a question : Why is this great king, who was so much cleverer and more learned and more broad-minded than his fierce and hugely successful but somewhat IQ-challenged forebears, the greatest fool to have walked the earth? (Unless of course he was the wiliest and the cleverest and the most cynical?) [And unless—since one wants to be fully fair and fully consider all possible eventualities—he was truly one of the greatest and wisest men of that long-long-ago age?]

With regards,
Another-of-those-who’ve-neither-read-your-book-nor-even-possess-it.

P.S. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed Brian’s comments on your book. And (again, for what that is worth), while I don’t suppose I’ll read all of your book either, I don’t suppose I’d have known about your book at all but for this article of Brian’s. If you should care to generally discuss your ideas briefly here, we (regular readers of Brian’s blog) are sure we’d enjoy it.

[observer]

Hi 777,

In your comment above you say: ..."these one KM diameter , one mile heigh pillars of methane in Siberia are so underestimated."

I know that you are a visionary and I really appreciate that Brian posts a variety of ideas and opinions here on his blog.

Because I live a reclusive lifestyle and spend much time researching and noticing the damage being done to the environment... what do you see coming towards us, a tsunami of disaster, an apocalyptic scenario?

Religious people are saying the end of the world is nigh.

[David R]

Religious people have been talking about the end of the world for over 2000 years.

Don't worry, it won't end.

I recently saw some Youtube user that has a channel about Jesus and end times who posted a prediction about the blood moon in March. She was wrong. LOL

[David R]

All these new books that have been coming out in the last 10 or so years about God and science actually irritate me. When will these people understand that science has nothing to do with God? Well, if they get rich off the book sales, it doesn't matter right?

[observer]

"Religious people have been talking about the end of the world for over 2000 years.

Don't worry, it won't end."

Yes, David R, they certainly have been expecting this for a long time.

My thoughts are that if there is such a strong combined negative belief and almost a desire for the end to come (and the second coming of the lord) etc bla bla bla, that they will actually manifest such.

Not totally the end of course but the end of the world as we know it (seems like its on the way imo) with the increasing natural disasters and upheavals, wars, extinction of species thats happening.

But then, science will save us... ;)

[x]

All these new books that have been coming out in the last 10 or so years about God and science actually irritate me. When will these people understand that science has nothing to do with God?

When will believers stop irritating reasonable people?

[William C Stuart]

Ms. Abrams tries to create something she can believe in from something she can not. Her fairy tale is no different than any other fairy tale; it is true because of her need and because she says it is. She spends most of the book letting it emerge through millennia of aspirations until it fits the science of the 21st century and centuries still to come.

[Upsetter]

Here is my advice to God (and the gods), all of them:

Show up here in this realm of physicallity and prove your existence by doing so, or get lost for ever! You are needed and appreciated like pimples in the face if you don't show up here personally!

And don't forget to explain some sh!t and/or invent some stuff for the sake of all sentient beings, if you come here! Else!