Searching for God and Seeing Red: Finding Comfort in the Incomprehensible (with a Glance at Consciousness and Quantum Weirdness) - Softcover

Norenberg MD, David

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798882504242

Verlag: Independently published, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Not a religious book; this is an accessible philosophy, psychology, and science book—a progression of short connecting essays on causality pertaining to free will, ethics and theology, and the most intriguing mysteries in physics and neuroscience.

Immortality is the paramount desire that powers all religions. Doing good and resisting evil are prerequisites for eternal life in Heaven. But what if we can’t help ourselves? Do we really have a choice? Entry into Paradise is predicated on the proposition that we have free will.

Must every event have a cause? It’s a straightforward, yes or no question that leads directly into a deductive minefield. Yes brings along determinism, with the logic that we cannot have free will. Then what happens to personal responsibility, right and wrong, good and evil? What becomes of Heaven, if Heaven means an afterlife where goodness is rewarded?

On the other hand, No indicates belief that some things happen without a cause, which is nothing short of magic. Wait though; in the microworld of atoms and subatomic particles, some things are said to happen randomly, spontaneously, for no reason whatsoever. Brains are made entirely of atoms. Could quantum theory save free will?

Answers to these questions have profound moral, social, and spiritual implications. Briefly venturing into the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics (moving from easily-described confounding double-slit experiments, to seemingly-impossible particle entanglement) and the baffling enigma of consciousness (wherein electric brain cell pulses transform somehow into sounds and scents and colors), this absorbing book brings unfathomable mechanisms working in the Cosmos together with the preeminent theological concerns of every thoughtful human being.

The author, a preacher’s son searching for reality and purpose, finds unexpected comfort in knowing there are things we cannot know—that we can neither figure out nor categorically deny—that lie outside our limited imagination.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist,
and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist.
-- Blaise Pascal

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Independently published
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 13: 9798882504242
• Einband: Paperback
• Anzahl der Seiten: 315
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar