CHAPTER 8: THE PARADOX OF EDEN

  1. Richard La Croix, “The Paradox of Eden,” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 15 (1984): 171. See also Glenn W. Erickson and John A. Fossa, Dictionary of Paradox (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1998), 54. Kenneth Lucey, What Is God? (selected essays of Richard La Croix) (Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 1993).

  2. Allen Podet, “La Croix’s Paradox: An Analysis” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 18 (1985): 69–72.

  3. Glenn W. Erickson and John A. Fossa, Dictionary of Paradox (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1998), 54.

  4. Ibid., 67–68.

  5. Arthur Lovejoy, “Milton and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall,” Essays in the History of Ideas, ed. Arthur Lovejoy (New York: George Braziller, 1955), 277–295; Herbert Weisinger, Tragedy and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1953). Donella Eberle, “Selected Critics on the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall in Paradise Lost,” http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/eberle/ENH221Lectures/FortunateFall.html.

  6. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, John Milton: A Reader’s Guide to His Poetry (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1998).

  7. Arthur Lovejoy, “Milton and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall,” 162–163.

  8. Diane McColley, “Eve’s Dream,” Milton Studies 12 (1978): 25–45.

  9. Virginia Mollenkott, “Milton’s Rejection of the Fortunate Fall,” Milton Quarterly 6 (March 1972): 1–4.

10. Alan Dershowitz, The Genesis of Justice (New York: Warner Books, 2000), 231, 235.

11. Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 12.

CHAPTER 9: THE BRAIN AND GOD: WHO’S IN CHARGE?

  1. “Postdiluvian” refers to the period of time after Noah’s flood—in contrast to antediluvian, the period of time before the flood. A “patriarch” is one of the scriptural fathers of the human race or of the Hebrew people—such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.

  2. I discuss these and other experiments with the brain and time distortion in my book, Time: A Traveler’s Guide (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000).

  3. Daniel Dennett and Marcel Kinsbourne, “Time and the Observer: The Where and When of Consciousness in the Brain,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1992): 183–247. Also see Rainer Wolf, “Believing What We See, Hear, and Touch: The Delights and Dangers of Sensory Illusions,” Skeptical Inquirer 20, no. 3 (May/June 1996): 23–30.

  4. Ibid.

CHAPTER 10: THE BODHISATTVA PARADOX

  1. Jasmine Hamlett, “Living Large: The World’s Largest Seated Buddha Statue! July 1, 2000,” http://www.worldtrek.org/odyssey/asia/070100/070100jaslargebuddha.html.

  2. Arthur Danto, Analytic Philosophy of Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); Arthur Danto, Mysticism and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1976); Glenn W. Erickson and John A. Fossa, Dictionary of Paradox (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1998), 24–25.

  3. Edward Ch’ien, “The Conception of Language and the Use of Paradox in Buddhism and Taoism,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 11 (1984): 375–399.

  4. John Cage, Indeterminacy (audio CD), Smithsonian Folkways #40804 / September 22, 1992.

  5. Buddhist Information Service of New York, “A Collection of Koans,” http://www.bodhiline.org/Directory/Koans.html.

  6. Glenn W. Erickson and John A. Fossa, Dictionary of Paradox (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1998), 140.

  7. Clifford Pickover, The Stars of Heaven.

  8. Robert Lawrence, Closer to Truth (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000).

  9. Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 312; also see Clifford Pickover, The Stars of Heaven.

10. John Fowles, The Magus (New York: Dell Publishing, 1985).

11. Hendrik Willem Van Loon, The Arts (London: Harrap, 1937).

CHAPTER 11: THE PARADOX OF PASCAL’S WAGER

  1. W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics, 4th ed. (New York: Dover, 1961).

  2. Michio Kaku, Hyperspace (New York: Anchor, 1994), 330–331.

  3. This is from a personal correspondence I had with Dr. Gracely. Similar notions have been discussed by Antony Duff in “Pascal’s Wager and Infinite Utilities,” Analysis 46 (1980): 107–109. Duff actually argues that even “trying” to believe in God has logical problems. Any action one takes to make oneself believe has some finite probability of failing, and any action at all (even pursuing unbelief) has some finite probability of leading to belief. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what one tries to do—all actions have a probability of one’s coming to belief in God, so all have infinite utility.

  4. Ed Gracely, personal communication.

  5. Jan Narveson, “Future People and Us,” Obligations to Future Generations, ed. B. Barry and R. I. Sikora (New York: White Horse Press, 1978).

  6. Barry McGuire, “Pascal in Peoria,” Skeptic 8, no. 4 (2001): 31.

CHAPTER 12: TWO UNIVERSES

  1. For further reading on this topic, see Clifford Pickover, The Alien IQ Test (New York: Dover, 2002).

  2. James W. Deardorff, “The Meier Case and Its Spirituality,” http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/billy-meier.html.

CHAPTER 13: GÖDEL’S PROOF OF GOD

  1. Hao Wang, Reflections on Kurt Gödel (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1987). See also Hao Wang, A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy (Representation and Mind) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996).

  2. For further reading on this topic, see Clifford Pickover, The Loom of God (New York: Plenum, 1999) and Clifford Pickover, Wonders of Numbers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

  3. The Whole Shebang: The Starlab Magazine, “Kurt Gödel,” http://www.shebangmagazine.com/Shebang4/godel.htm.

  4. Hao Wang, A Logical Journey, 101.

CHAPTER 14: THE PARADOX OF UZZAH

  1. Jashan A’al (Valeska Scholl), “Jehovah: Thoughts on the Old Testament God,” http://www.jashan.net/corporate/sites/ascendancy/darkness/writings/jehovah.html.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Craig Becker, personal communication.

  6. Physicist Andrei Linde’s theory of self-reproducing universes implies that new universes are being created all the time through a budding process. In this theory, tiny balls of spacetime called “baby universes” are created in universes like our own and evolve into universes resembling ours. This theory does not mean we can find these other universes by traveling in a rocket ship. These universes that bud off from our own might pinch off from our spacetime and then disappear. (For a very brief moment, a thin strand of spacetime called a wormhole might connect the baby and parent universes. The wormholes would have diameters 10²⁰ smaller than the dimension of an atomic nucleus, and the wormhole might remain in existence for only 10^–43 seconds.) The baby universes would also have offspring, and all the countless universes could be very different. Some might collapse into nothingness quickly after their creation. Stephen Hawking has suggested that subatomic particles are constantly traveling through wormholes from one universe to another.
    Other researchers have also postulated that baby universes are spawned from parent universes, and the babies also have babies. According to one theory, the children inherit similar physical laws from their parents, and “successful” universes have a tendency to produce successful offspring. Successful universes are long-lived and have many children and stars, all of which encourages the formation of biological life. See Clifford Pickover, The Stars of Heaven (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

  7. Hugh Everett, “‘Relative State’ Formulation of Quantum Mechanics,” Reviews of Modern Physics 29 (1957): 454–462.

  8. Michio Kaku, Hyperspace (New York: Anchor, 1994), 307.

  9. Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 308.

10. Robert Sawyer, Calculating God (New York: TOR, 2000). See also Clifford Pickover, The Stars of Heaven (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

11. In Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Ballantine, 1994), 237.

12. Jane Roberts, Seth Speaks (San Rafael, California: Amber-Allen, 1994).

CHAPTER 15: THE PARADOX OF DR. ECK

  1. Richard R. La Croix, “The Incompatibility of Omnipotence and Omniscience” and “Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Necessity,” in What Is God?, ed. Kenneth Lucey (Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 1993), 26–30. Also see Richard R. La Croix “The Incompatibility of Omnipotence and Omniscience,” Analysis 33 (April 1973): 176. Richard La Croix, “Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Necessity,” Analysis 34 (December 1973): 63–64.

  2. Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Ballantine, 1994), 191.

  3. Ibid., 193.

  4. Ibid., 166.

  5. Ibid., 319.

  6. Ibid., 242.

  7. Ibid., 150.

  8. Ibid., 233.

  9. Ibid., 303.

10. Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. See also: Sir Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Book III, trans. Andrew Motte (London: H. D. Symonds, 1803), Book II, 160–162 and 310–314. Reprinted in Marvin Perry, Joseph Peden, and Theodore H. Von Laue, eds., Sources of the Western Tradition, vol. II: From the Renaissance to the Present, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 50–52. Also see Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, ed. Florian Cajavi, trans. Andrew Motte (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1934) and Karen Armstrong, A History of God, 304.

11. Karen Armstrong, A History of God, 304–305.

CHAPTER 16: THE PARADOX OF LED ZEPPELIN

  1. For an in-depth discussion, see Richard R. La Croix, “Divine omniprescience: Are Literary Works Eternal Entities?” in What Is God?, ed. Kenneth Lucey (Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 1993), 134–141. Also see Richard R. La Croix “Divine Omniprescience,” Religious Studies 15 (1979): 28–87.

  2. Eric Kaplan, personal communication.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Leszek Kolakowski, The Keys to Heaven (New York: Grove Press, 1972), 3–4.

  5. Karen Karbo, “Stairway to Heaven: Is This the Greatest Song of All Time?” Esquire, November 1991, http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/8678/stairway.html.

  6. Robert Walser, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1993).

CHAPTER 17: A FEW QUICK PUZZLES AND SURVEYS

  1. Jacques Boivin, The Single Heart Field Theory (Self-published, printed in Hull, Quebec, Canada, 1978).

  2. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 123.

  3. Michael Murphy, The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature (New York: Tarcher, 1993).

  4. Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Ballantine, 1994), 115.

  5. Freeman Dyson, “Time without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe,” Reviews of Modern Physics 51 (1979): 447–460.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul’s Bane (New York: Del Rey, 1984).

  8. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (New York: Viking, 1984).

  9. Fred Alan Wolf, Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds (New York: Touchstone, 1984).

10. John Fowles, The Magus (New York: Dell Publishing, 1985).

11. Karen Armstrong, A History of God, 98.

12. J. B. S. Haldane’s apocryphal quotation can be found in many sources, such as Arthur V. Evans, An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1996) and B. D. Farrell, “‘Inordinate Fondness’ Explained: Why Are There So Many Beetles?” Science 281 (1998): 555–559.

13. Ilkka A. Hanski and Yves Cambefort (Illustrator), Dung Beetle Ecology (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991).

14. The Urantia Book (Chicago: Urantia Foundation, 1999).