This is a book about how many of the 'big' philosophical and religious questions that have puzzled mankind for centuries can be answered by recent breakthroughs in science.
This is the kind of book that will challenge your assumptions about the nature of the universe and our place in it.
There are a lot of popular physics and cosmology books out there at the moment that claim to tackle questions about God, the soul and our human lives. Few do so well. Occasionally I have bought a popular cosmology book promising to provide insights into the nature of our existence only to find that the person who did the promotional material clearly hadn't either read the book or spoken to the author about its content. This book, on the other hand, demonstrates what science, through experiment and observation, can reveal about the nature of the soul, morality, and the state of eternity.
Even if you find this controversial and disagree with it wholeheartedly (the conspicuously religious may not want to read this!), you may very well find it a far more thought-provoking and enjoyable read than others in the genre that skirt around the big issues.
The scope of the book is broad: from the existence of the theological state of eternity to how evolutionary biology and information theoery can inform our understanding of morality.
I would heartily recommend this to readers who have books on the shelves in the religion, philosophy, cosmology and popular physics categories, as well as those who enjoy the religion/science dialogue.
I stopped reading this book at about 60% . An average person will be lost about half way through, the terminology is lost on the average person, scientific statements are made that unless you're a physicist you will have no idea what is being said or if it's true. Those that will understand this book have no reason to read it those that no not understand it......... Enough said.
I've only gotten through 5 percent of this stuff and I had to stop. It was about the point where the human soul was discussed and how (according to the author) it can be captured in a robotic "brain". How down right silly is this? The human brain has over 90 billion neutrons connected in probably a quadrillion or more possible connections (And that's only one human -- currently there are over 5 billion of us -- do the math for Christ's sake). To assume that you can capture this all on silcon and call it person is absurd. And even if you could, would you have the person or just a fasimile. As a robot symbiotic of me, If I were thinking about the ice cream I had in Ocean City, Md on 4/13/1947 and thinking the same thought as a human and, at that precise moment in time, had a typical biological urgency that we've all have daily throughout every second of our lifetime (use your imagination) that a robot would never be subjected to -- would the thought sequences really be the same between robot and human -- really, really. People like this author are not very deep critical thinkers. They think our our thought processes are the interplay of bits and bytes -- not the 3.5 billion years of biological interrplay that comes into play forming our conscious world. What arrogance on his part to reuce our collective experiences into mere ones and zeros. LOL
My head is whirling after reading this book. I slogged through it, all the time wishing I had taken physics in high school. Several more readings will be required before I am able to grasp a all the contents.
Unfortunately this author is both prejudiced and opinionated, while refusing to acknowledge the work of (many) others. A few good points overall spoiled by the above. In a word. Rubbish.