SIMULATIONS OF GOD: The Science of Belief

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 26, 1975

By prefatory admission, this book appears despite misgivings of the author's editor, agent, and wife who consider it impenetrable to most readers. Lilly apparently believes that there are enough space cowboys out there who'd enjoy the ride to warrant the venture, and anyway he only writes as the scribe of some unknown source. But even the credulous get a bum steer: the book merely vacillates between the incomprehensible and the banal. Lilly, best known for pioneering research with dolphins and LSD, bases this excursion on current work in ""sense-deprivation tank"" therapy. Its alleged aim is to aid readers in discovering the spontaneous belief systems within which they operate by supplying many simulations of God (God Out There, God as Orgasm and Sex, God as Money, God as the Dyad, etc.). This enterprise is simply a complicated variant on Feuerbach's century-old idea that God is an alienated projection of humanity's ideals onto the universe and of Tillich's identification of one's God with one's ultimate concern. Lilly clothes and elaborates similar notions in the jargon of computer science and cybernetics, thereby masking commonplaces and obscuring any novel contribution. Appendices offer reprints of related articles and a batch of awful poems; a Genesis-like prologue, a kind of incantatory calculus, gives fair warning of the self-indulgent gibberish to follow.

Pub Date: May 26, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1975

Categories: NONFICTION