Customer Reviews

The man who Created God

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This book is supposed to be a satirical novel, but I read it as a straight one. I guess one could do that, as one could read Gulliver's Travels straight. Its subject is a commendable one: create a science-based, natural religion in the spirit of Einstein, to replace the existing ones centered around an anthropomorphic god created by human imagination and wishful thinking (mostly the three Abrahamist/Adamist faiths) and create a matching natural god while preserving the spititual nature of Man. The main character is Prof. Jeremiah Cackelry, an expert in brain sciences, as smart as Einstein and then some. There is little dialogue, the book unfolds through the narration of an ever-present, omniscient observer (my creative writing teacher would say: "Don't tell me, show me!") The full name of the prof appears thousand of times, one wishes that he would be referred simply as Jerry, to save a bunch of pages! The book is preachy most of the time (which is all right with me, being a member of the choir, but I'm not sure how far a non-member would stay with it). Sometimes it veers into sheer jeremiads.
The plot is reasonably neat, although some people will find one suspicious character being lesbian objectionable, and the references to Transylvania and Frankenstein are weird and out of place. I guess creating these references is safer than battling the real, more likely opposers of the natural religion, people whose faiths are interwined with national and racial identities. Oh well, a few rewrites, or the screen-writers might take care of these!
The author has a way with acronyms and names: I especially liked BARF, and one character's psychiatrist named Sigma Freud! The time-frame is mid-21st century, like the books "The Singularity is Near" and "The Radical Evolution," although there are no high-tech gadgets here--with the exception of an MRI machine, suitable for non-evasive lobotomy. I miss any references to space, what seems near impossible here on Earth will come natural on a space colony.
Returning to satire: I think the time-frame to establish his natural religion in 40-some months is satirical all right; a product of imagination and wishful thinking--and one has to be careful with those. They put us into this mass we are in now! Also the choice of the place: Europe/Switzerland (in the Tower of Babel?) where xenophobia is hopelessly rampant? Excuse me! It will take more than a common religion for Man to become Homo Universalis; it will take a common language as well. HU will more likely emerge in the US, in the New World of immigrants and tolerance, Monkey Trials and Intelligent Design notwithstanding! Maybe it will emerge in the author's and Einsten's own Princeton, or here at Stanford in California, where one can find a Sikh Temple next to a Mosque, among dozens of Christian denomination houses of worship. We also have to find a catchier name than Natural Religion and Natural God! "Sci/religion has been suggested by Corey Powell in his "God in the Equation," but I'd rather go with Cosmotheism and CosmoDeus.
I recommend this book to those emerging from their shamanistic cocoons into the One World of Man.
Alex Farkas Sunnyvale, CA. www.cosmotheist.com