Review: The God Problem – How A Godless Cosmos Creates

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Howard Bloom

5.0 out of 5 stars CHALLENGING–Multi-Volume Story of Civilization's Soul in One Volume,August 26, 2012

I have been hooked on Howard Bloom's thinking since I read Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century. I on to read his first book (The Lucifer Principle) and then found The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism which has been one of the most popular reviews at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog (created so people can access my reviews within each of the 98 categories in which I read, something Amazon has never been willing to offer). And now we have this.

The raves first and then the nits.

RAVES:

At a time when the Catholic Church is grappling with secrecy versus the truth in dealing with the recurring global scandals of child molestation, and also grappling with theological truth versus scientific truth, this book could not be more timely.

If all of the very latest insights and innovations could be jumbled up in a blender with the history of civilization, this is what would come out once distilled to the essence.

The book strikes me as the answer to every Sunday crossword puzzle every invented, revealing the solutions to each one at a time in a manner seems totally perfect.

Potentially a paradigm / mind-set / game changer of a book.

Eclectic does not do this book justice – it may irritate and infuriate, but it will assuredly educate even the overly-educated. 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. Nature as the real book of God, instead of the dogmas of hierarchically structured religions that thrive in secrecy, is ground for excommunication in some circles.

In one book, more history, science, and philosophy than I have encountered in a lifetime of learning.

Deeply intriguing is the intersection of Nature, music, mathematics, and the patterns of life.

Utterly gripping summary of Wolfams work, A New Kind of Science a book that I bought and found to be completely beyond my abilities.

NITS:

This is one of those books where you MUST read the notes, and ideally, read them first (as I do) and then again at the end of the chapter. This is alone one of those books where the ideal arrangement is the book in front of you and DuckDuckGo or Wikipedia on a screen in front of you. If the author and publisher had provided a small sidebar with photos and short bios or descriptions of each person or idea named, even if limited to one per page (there are many per page) the book would be the multi-volume set I felt I held in my hands. So consider dong online supplemental exploration as you read this book.

This is a book that could benefit from a glossary. There is no question in my mind: Howard Bloom is a genius of the first uder. That raises a small translation issue. Key terms such as translation, differentiation, ratio, harmony, recruitment, patterns abound in this book, and while one can have a “sense” of the meaning of the words, I believe a second edition would benefit from having a Glossary.

I like to link to other books and do so here, but Howard Bloom and The God Problem are in a class of their own. The books below should be seen as supporting paths leading up to The God Problem, and this reminds me, God DOES exist, God is We when we actually are We with Earth and the Cosmos. Obviously we have a long way to go.