“The God Problem is the next paradigm. It doesn't take you down the proverbial “rabbit hole”—it will take you to a place from which you will never reemerge, a brand-new universe in the same skin as the one you now unknowingly inhabit.” —Heinz Insu Fenkl, director of the State University of New York's Interstitial Studies Institute “Bloom's greatest talent is his ability to deliver mind-bending concepts in beautifully accessible prose. The breadth and scope of his knowledge is utterly extraordinary, and The God Problem is enormously engaging. It truly manages to get beyond the usual divisions between science and belief, and it offers an arresting and original take on the question of how a universe designs itself.” —Matt Thorne, Encore Award–winning novelist “Absolutely sparkling with ideas.” —David Christian, founder of the International Big History Association and author of Maps of Time “Part scientific history lesson, part meditation on the foundations of cosmic evolution, The God Problem is the work of a rare thinker willing to face directly into one of the great unsung mysteries of science: the stupendous creativity of the universe. At once entertaining, irreverent, and erudite, The God Problem brilliantly dances around the edges of physics, biology, and philosophy, showing us what may be the next staging ground in the advance of truth.” —Carter Phipps, author of Evolutionaries “[An] entertaining, suspenseful, rigorous, and thoroughly mathematical survey of the complexity of cosmic (and human) nature.” —Martin Bojowald, author of Once Before Time: A Whole Story of the Universe “The God Problem is what James Joyce's Ulysses might have been like had he written about science. It's an intellectual history no one has put together before. It's like a James Bond martini—shaken, not stirred. It rearranges your thoughts and opens the doors of perception. And it's fun. The God Problem is urgent. It's entangled with the Mortality Problem, and the Mortality Problem looms ever larger in the lives of 70 million baby boomers. Many of us have abandoned conventional religion in favor of a deeper inquiry into spirituality. Some of us have looked to the East without finding everything we sought. Some of us have looked to the pagan past with some success. But when you look into the face of modern science in all its glory you'll find many of the pieces we've all been missing. And revealing those missing pieces is what The God Problem is all about. Don't let anyone undersell this.” —Steve Hovland, video maker “A work of genius. In one book, more history, science, and philosophy than I have encountered in a lifetime of learning. This book stomps mud tracks across disciplines and slashes with a razor, rendering the death of a thousand cuts to the complacency of status-quo thinking. What some call heresy others will certainly call genius. A paradigm/mind-set/game changer.” —Robert Steele, number one Amazon.com reviewer for nonfiction “An ebullient, enthralling piece of intellectual detective work, bursting with original insight. Bloom brings his kaleidoscopic mind to bear in unraveling the cosmic mysteries of creativity.” —Alex Wright, author of Glut: Mastering Information through the Ages “Bloom takes us on a magic carpet ride of ideas about…well, about everything. And it turns out that everything we knew about everything is probably wrong. Howard Bloom is the absolute master polymath, and his book is an intellectual cave of wonders made more wonderful by the tales of the lives of the people behind the ideas. Don't start this book late at night, for it will banish sleep.” —Robin Fox, author of The Tribal Imagination and former director of research for the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation “A gleeful intellectual romp through the farthest reaches of science and philosophy in search of the answer to the ultimate question. And in the end we find that it's bagels all the way down.” —Nova Spivack, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Bottlenose “Is The God Problem a great book…like Darwin's The Origin of Species, Lyell's Principles of Geology, or Newton's Principia Mathematica?…[R]are is the book that ever evokes such thoughts as these. Books and ideas that matter have to open up ideas…. The God Problem is a book that makes connections [and] makes its readers make connections…. It is also Bloom's best book yet, a sweeping narrative of divergent ideas brought under one umbrella through a Keatsian demiurge.” —Dan Schneider, founder of Cosmoetica.com “It's a blast of clean energy! Exalted! Glorious! Astounding.” —Nancy Weber, author of The Life Swap “The God Problem is thrilling. The way Bloom tells the story, you can't stop reading until the end.” —Hector Zenil, Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Technique “The God Problem is a sacred secular masterpiece. Divine. An act of astonishing genius. Bloom has created the ultimate scientific detective story. I pray with all the neutrinos in my soul that it will become the adjunct Bible of the future.” —Mark Lamonica, winner of the Southern California Booksellers Association nonfiction award “A crowning achievement by one of the deepest thinkers of our time. A page- turner, something you almost never see in a subject this profound.” —Walter Putnam, dean of communications at the Kepler Space Institute “An incandescent exploration of the most intractable scientific enigmas, with the most cogent and surprising critique of the second law of thermodynamics since the invention of the steam engine. It shakes out like shining from shook foil and oozes to a greatness.” —George Gilder, author of The Israel Test and Wealth and Poverty and winner of the White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence “A must-read for those wanting great literature delving into the greatest mysteries.” —Edgar Mitchell, sixth astronaut on the moon “Terrific. I am stupefied by the amount of work Bloom has put in. Bloom is an authentic genius.” —Jean Paul Baquiast, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris “The God Problem will change your life.” —David Swindle, associate editor, PJ Media “I can't stop reading The God Problem—it's infectious.” —Mark Lupisella, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center “An enjoyment shot through with things you never knew.” —Allen Johnson, author of The Evolution of Human Societies “A profound and extraordinary look into the history of human thought.” —Yuri Ozhigov, chair of quantum informatics, Moscow State University “Boy, what a book! I haven't gotten this much pleasure from science since James Gleick's Chaos in 1988. Bloom's The God Problem is the most thrilling thinking matter of our time.” —Pascal Jouxtel, author of Comment les systèmes pondent, une introduction à la mémétique “Great book, a huge scope, a delicious intellectual buffet, a fantastic effort to corral a conundrum. The range of scholarship is extraordinary and the unfolding of the story is magnificent.” —Sean O'Reilly, editor at large, Traveler's Tales “Howard Bloom has never shied away from tackling BIG issues. Within The God Problem he takes on the biggest yet and does so with an eminently engaging style that makes the central illuminations glow.” —Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence “My face was hurting from smiling, contemplating, reading until my eyes hurt. Bloom has managed to make my heart swell with pride and my head hurt in amazement that no one before him has strung together these theories, observations, mistakes, and explanations of, well, ALL THINGS science in such an entertaining way! Great read!” —Shy'Ann Jie, Colby Research Group, University of Delaware “This is the antidote to nihilism. It is Chicken Soup for the Collective Soul of the Global Brain. Bloom's content, pace, and style will rivet you, which is what happens when someone suggests an entire paradigm shift!” —David Tamm, author of Universal History and the Telos of Human Progress “An eye opener. An alternative language for discussing the origins of the universe. Bloom's clarity and accessibility allows almost anyone entry into the mystery of how mathematics became the language of science. The God Problem is a romp.” —Steve Miller, artist, faculty member at the School of Visual Arts “Another Magnificent Bloom Opus! I adore Bloom's storytelling of our intellectual history. It is SUCH fun to read, making it feel like a play whose hero is you.” —Elisabet Sahtouris, author of Earth Dance: Living Systems in Evolution “A fascinating bunch of stuff about a live issue. Always something unexpected and interesting around the next narrative corner.” —Bill Benzon, author of Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture “Breathtaking.” —Michael Mendizza, founder of Touch the Future “Brilliant. Filled with things I didn't know and thoughts I wouldn't think without Bloom. I love the moral and positive exhortation at the end and the rare optimism about a social order in a time of crisis.” —Danny Goldberg, author of Bumping into Geniuses: My Life inside the Rock and Roll Business Published 2012 by Prometheus Books The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates. Copyright © 2012 by Howard Bloom. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Trademarks: In an effort to acknowledge trademarked names of products mentioned in this work, we have placed ® or ™ after the product name in the first instance of its use in each chapter. Subsequent mentions of the name within a given chapter appear without the symbol. In addition, we have made every effort to comply with Google's guidelines for third-party use of Google brand features. Cover image © 2012 Media Bakery, Inc. Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht Inquiries should be addressed to Prometheus Books 59 John Glenn Drive Amherst, New York 14228–2119 VOICE: 716–691–0133 FAX: 716–691–0137 WWW.PROMETHEUSBOOKS.COM 16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bloom, Howard K., 1943– The God problem : how a godless cosmos creates / by Howard Bloom. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–61614–551–4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978–1–61614–552–1 (ebook) 1. Science—Social aspects. 2. Religion and science. 3. Cosmology—Miscellanea. I. Title. Q175.5.B57 2012 500—dc23 2012013460 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 1. Appetizers, Canapés, and Snacks Introduction: I Dare You—The Weirdest Ride in the Universe The Café Table at the Beginning of the Universe The Problem with God: The Tale of a Twisted Confession 2. A Taste of Sin Brace Yourself: The Five Heresies Heresy Number One: Why A Does Not Equal A When Is a Frog a River? Aristotle Wrestles Heraclitus Heresy Number Two: Why One Plus One Does Not Equal Two Heresy Number Three: Prepare to Be Burned at the Stake (The Second Law of Thermodynamics—Why Entropy Is an Outrage) Heresy Number Four: Randomness Is Wrong—The Six Monkeys at Six Typewriters Error A Brief History of the God Problem: Were Kepler, Galileo, and Newton Creationists? Galileo's Nature Fetish: Poking the Pope Gamow versus Hoyle: The War between Big Bang and Steady State The Tale of the Termites 3. The Saga of a Scratch Mark The Mystery of the Magic Beans: What the Hell Is an Axiom? Barley, Bricks, and Babylonians: The Birth of Math Scratch Mud and You Get Mind: The Rise of a Virtual Reality The Sorcery of Corners Celebrities in the Heavens: How to Invent Astronomy What's the Angle? Blindness in Babylon Why Knot? The Egyptian Rope Trick How to Hypnotize a Greek: Math as a Tourist Attraction Seduce 'Em with Numbers: How to Do a Pythagoras Squaring Your Way to Fame: Pythagoras's Hot New Theorem 4. How Aristotle Invented the Axiom