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God Is Not Dead: What Quantum Physics Tells Us about Our Origins and How We Should Live

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Amit Goswami's "God is Not Dead" is an interesting read, even as a less noteworthy contribution compared to Goswami's "The Self-Aware Universe."

Goswami's treatment springs from his understanding of quantum mechanics, the quantum wave function, and the wave function's collapse. He (page 22) writes: "Quantum possibilities are possibilities of consciousness itself, which is the ground of all being. This takes us back to monistic idealism.... Our looking is tantamount to choosing, from among all the quantum possibilities, the one unique facet that becomes our experienced actuality." Looking collapses the wave function, as much as we can tell from quantum mechanics.

Goswami (page 23) writes: "We don't choose in our ordinary state of individual consciousness that we call the ego the subjective aspect of ourselves that the behaviorist studies and that is the result of conditioning. Instead, we choose from an unconditioned, objective state of unitive consciousness, the non-ordinary state where we are one, a state we can readily identify with God."

Goswami writes (page 23) the following. "Our exercise of choice, the events quantum physicists call the collapse of the quantum possibility wave, is God's exercise of the power of downward causation. And the way God's downward causation is this: for many objects and many events, the choice is made in such a way that objective predictions of quantum probability hold; yet in individual events, the scope of creative subjectivity is retained."

Goswami writes (page 24): "The quantum signatures of downward causation are discontinuity (as in our experience of creative insight), nonlocality (as in the signal-less communication of metal telepathy), and circular hierarchy, also called tangled hierarchy (as sometimes experienced between people in love)." Goswami expands on the tangled hierarchy, a structure introduced by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

Goswami writes (page 30): "The paradigm shift of our science now taking place is revealed in depth psychology and transpersonal psychology and the branch of medicine that is called alternative medicine. The paradigm shift is also revealed in the work of organismic biologists who see causal autonomy in the entire biological organism, not merely in its microscopic components. Some evolutionary biologists even see the necessity of invoking `intelligent design' of life to break the shackle of Darwinian beliefs. The practitioners of these branches of science have penetrated the camouflage to some extent. With the help of quantum physics, the penetration of the camouflage is much more extensive. "

Goswami's book provides evidence for the reality of God, and he gives (page 34) an early outline: "In view of quantum physics, the vast data on life after death, and alternative subtle-body medicine, it is considerably more difficult to refute the ideas of downward causation and subtle bodies. And who in their right mind would try to refute the importance of virtues and values in our lives? Clearly, the religious have a more plausible theory of virtues and values than the biologists who claim they evolved from Darwinian adaptation via chance and necessity."

Goswami writes on the sometimes hidden foundation of religious attitude: "Jesus himself was a great mystic. Following his lead, Christianity in the West has had other great mystics who have propounded monistic idealism, mystics such as Meister Eckhart, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Catherine of Genoa, etc. But the organized nature of Christianity drowned out the voices of the mystics (ironically, including Jesus), and dualism has prevailed in the official thinking of Christendom."

Goswami tells us that it is feeling that gives us the first sign of something beyond the physical that leads to the spiritual. It is feeling that is left unexplained by science. Goswami writes (page 137): "When we look at our experiences of feeling, meaning, and the archetypal contexts of feeling and meaning through the conceptual lens of the new science - science within consciousness - we find that there is ample experimental proof that they don't arise from the physical body. They occur in conjunction with the body, but they are not the physical body. Instead they come from God, or more accurately from the Godhead; we choose them from our own God potentia. In other words, no mystic has to tell us that God is our `father.' Every one of us has that intuition already. The new science is just validating that intuition."

Goswami writes (page 153): "The God hypothesis is needed to incorporate feelings as part of our experience. You will notice that feeling-oriented cultures tend to be believers in God (good or bad), whereas when rationalism dominates a culture, it tends to move away from the God hypothesis. This is not a coincidence."

I am afraid that my brief review will not do justice to all of the topics in Goswami's book. There is discussion of reincarnation, karma, parapsychology, mind-body healing and other topics that are being related to the reality of God as philosophical arguments. Goswami is breaking new ground here. Nevertheless, the book could benefit with additional treatments of some classical philosophical arguments, and I mean to point to arguments that are beyond Thomas Aquinas. Hegel's "ontological proof of God" and Charles S. Peirce's "neglected argument for the reality of God" (as they are known) provide non-dual understandings that are agreeable to Goswami's monistic idealism, in my opinion.

Amit Goswami, for many years professor of physics at the University of oregon, but today perhaps best known for his contributions to the provocative and profound "What The Bleep"-movie. The movie 'sceptics' loved to hate.

In his previous books Goswami has tackled problems about the universe we live in, life after death/reincarnation and the Eastern concept of enlightenment, all viewed from his special outlook: combining quantum physics and spirituality in a non-dualistic vision.

Here he again tackles the hot subject of intelligent design, presenting af view that's challenging both for creationists and neo-Darwinists (Dawkins & Co.). Showing that there's ample reason to admit, that we live in a Universe that's somehow 'created' by a higher intelligence. And showing convincingly, that subscribing to the sound view of 'Intelligent Design' has nothing whatsoever to do with (fundamentalist) Christianity.

This territory he has covered before, but here he takes it a step futher, dealing with the loaded concept of a Creator/God. And trying to anchor his views in a practical morality, always a difficult matter to deal with.

As always with Goswami the book is well-written, entertaining and thought-provoking. Another cry of insight and vision in the often all to barren modern day intellectual climate! Should appeal to readers interested in a new scientific paradigm. And in writers like B. Allan Wallace, Deepak Chopra, Stan Grof, Fred Alan Wolf. And anyone open minded enough to challenge his/hers prejudices about how the world around us (and in us) functions.

As with his previous book this one feels more engaging and challenging than deeply convincing.

It is exciting to see this new science being developed. Goswami does a beautiful job at breaking down the concepts of quantum physics and delivering it simply. To see a new science developing that is ready to acknowledge and examine 'consciousness' is thrilling. My hat goes off to Amit Goswami in being one of the first scientists to start exploring this new frontier. Great book.

Imagine... a probability function which is uniformly distributed and which extends to include every single possibility! This would imply a world in which anything would not just be possible, but also equally probable. According to quantum physicist Amit Goswami, this is exactly the way the universe operates. The problem is that we are so attached to our limited consciousness, our recurring thoughts and banal worries; our ego and its pathetic predictability, that we often find ourselves trapped in a bird's cage.

Now, infinite possibility does not mean randomness nor chaos. There is a higher force acting in downward causality, which created delicate and complex life-forms out of nothingness; self-reflecting entities out of carbon atoms. And this is the same intelligence that, given the chance, will manifest the most perfect outcome for us in any given situation. And I say given the chance, because every time we entertain our mind with the ever-recurring wave of limited thought patterns, we actually collapse the possibility function from its infinite potentiality into the finite and often lame egoic frame of experience. By imagining the quantum possibility wave as it is, we open up a Divine gap of peace and silence, where the power of the Absolute can enter the picture and do its magic.

It is this meditative practice of emptying ourselves of every thought and of every attachment, as both eastern sages and western mystics have taught for thousands of years, that we can make a sudden quantum leap into the realm of the unimaginable, the land of true creativity, as Goswami puts it. We suddenly start to live according to God's Will, if you will. Thanks to Goswami's insights I was able to understand the science of meditation from a quantum physics point of view.

The book "God Is Not Dead" presents a quantum physicists view about understanding the philosophy behind proven results in physics that incorporates a spiritual dimension and includes the new way to view reality: the primacy of consciousness to replace the old dogma of the primacy of matter. That gives the world and our species a new reason to believe in God based upon science, and could lead to a more unified society in the world.

Goswami vividly demonstrates his ability to make quantum physics understandable. His book relates philosophy and religion to quantum theory. I am a passionate supporter of those who attempt to heal the rift between science and spirituality.

I didn't read this book to prove to me that there is a Divine Intelligence operating in this world. I have had enough miracles occur in my life to prove that fact to me, and I even wrote my own book on the subject. However, I was intrigued by the idea of having my beliefs corroborated by real scientific evidence. And this book seems to do just that. I say "seems to," because there was just a little bit too much technical jargon in this book for me, so it was sometimes difficult for me to completely comprehend what the author was saying. Overall, though, the evidence seemed fairly clear and convincing, and I appreciate the author's thoroughness.

Steven Lane Taylor, author of Row, Row, Row Your Boat: A Guide for Living Life in the Divine Flow

If you're looking for any or all of these: 1.) sensible, philosophically-inclined discussion and integration of science, quantum theory and human spiritual behavior, 2.) understandable discussions of newer explanations about individual, personal experiences of God, 3.) supporting theories (for those who can read between the lines) about how people can have personal, paranormal experiences, 4.) how you might (perish not the thought!) actually talk respectfully to someone who believes in Christianity's version of intelligent design, 5.) how you might have renewed hope that materialism could actually give way to real science...

... then this is your read, and could be a tremendously exciting book for you. I couldn't recommend it more highly. Get it and enjoy it! Thank you, Amit Goswami!

This is penned from a personal perspective, because I don't know as much about any other. Importantly, ideas employing the word, "God" are always personal and there's not a bloody thing anyone can say to you which explains that your experience is invalid. Ever.

If you're a dyed-in-the-wool materialist, an unwavering fan of scientific materialism - afraid or uninterested in apprehending the evidence for sea changes in quantum theory - this is NOT your read. Don't waste your time, mine or anyone else's trying to digest it unless you're genuinely interested in the possibility of constructive change. And don't waste our time offering a negative review about this book; it won't be any more productive than an auto mechanic who never sets foot in a kitchen, who then muddles through his first published critique of a cookbook ;)

This book is well worth the read. I have read many books on subjects like this, but none as fascinating as this one by Amit Goswami. Explaining clearly difficult concepts like non-locality and tangled-hierarchies, Goswami leads the reader into the quantum physics understanding of the nature of God or what he terms Quantum Consciousness. This is a voice of fresh air about a highly controversial subject - the meeting of science and spirituality. You can't go wrong reading this book....

It's a book about ID, what more can you expect besides the butchering of actual science?