This one is a quickie. We just spotted this attention-grabbing press release: New Book Challenges Big Bang, Darwinism and Creationism.
This is big news! What’s it all about? The press release says:
The Heaven at the End of Science: An Argument for a New Worldview of Hope, by Philip Mereton, takes a fresh and bold look at the debate between science and religion — and attempts to go farther than any other book to unite them.
Instead of trying to show that religion is wrong because science is better at finding truth, or that science must be wrong because it leaves out God, this new book shows that if we eliminate the unnecessary assumptions of our modern, materialistic worldview, we wind up finding a way to connect the logical rigor of science with the hopes and dreams of religion.
This is exciting! All we need to do is “eliminate the unnecessary assumptions of our modern, materialistic worldview.” Yes! Throw out logic. Throw out the validity of sensory evidence. Ignore the existence of objective reality. Gone, all of it!
That would — at last! — open the way for Oogity Boogity! This is the book we’ve all been waiting for. What else does the press release tell us? (By the way, the bold font was added by us.)
The Heaven at the End of Science says that instead of viewing the universe as a random outcome of the Big Bang or as a special creation from the hand of God, why not see if we can explain the world as a powerful dream emerging from a universal mind, a mind some call God?
Okay, we’ve seen quite enough from that source. What can we learn elsewhere? We found the book’s Amazon listing, and learned that the publisher is something called “Distant Drums Press.” They have no website that we could find, so we assume they’re a very low-grade vanity publisher.
Now then, how can we wrap this up? Well, dear reader, here’s your Curmudgeon’s advice: If you’re tired of creationism, if crop-circles no longer thrill you, if you miss your friends from the Heaven’s Gate cult, and if you’re still seeking the latest in non-materialist science, then go ahead and get a copy of The Heaven at the End of Science.
And be sure to let us know how it works out.
Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
It sounds like typical whatever-feels-good-is-true New Age spirituality posing as plague-on-both-their-houses/the-truth-is-somewhere-in-the-middle that should sell very well if Oprah recommends it.
I, for one, accept the reality that this is a dream emerging from a universal mind,
You really know it’s going to be nonsense when you see ‘Darwinism’.
On the plus side, the more IDiocy’s relativism is associated with New Age’s relativism, the more easy it becomes to see how they’re both spiritualistic nonsense.
Keep it up, New Agers. Science is essentially at odds with both ID and your breed of claptrap, and the more you point this out the better people will see ID as the junk anti-science that it is.
This is also nothing new. It echoes pieces of the Hindu belief in a god that dreams the world and of Bishop Berkeley’s argument that matter only exists when it is being minded. I suppose that it’s only plagiarism when the original writer has a lawyer.
Greg Camp says: “This is also nothing new.”
Of course not. It’s yet another product of mindlessness. There are infinite versions of non-reality, but they share the characteristic of being fantasies.
This reminds me of a Carl Sagan video where he talks about Hinduism and the dream of Brama.