God in the Equation : How Einstein Became the Prophet of the New Religious Era

From Publishers Weekly
For thousands of years, science and religion have occupied separate rooms in the house of culture. As science writer Powell points out, though, such a separation is hardly warranted in the modern world, where a new faith that he calls sci/religion captures both the mystical and the empirical. The prophet of sci/religion, Powell claims, is Einstein, whose search for a unifying factor in his relativity theory brought together the elements of physics and metaphysics. Einstein believed that a spirit vastly superior to the spirit of man is manifest in the laws of the universe, and he named this spirit Lamda. His Lamda principle became known as the cosmological constant, a force that dominated the universe and mitigated the inward pull of gravity. In this lively story, Powell traces the rise of the scientific community's tendency to explain the workings of the universe in mystical ways, as they search for the forces dark energy, dark matter that unify and bring order to the universe. Powell argues that sci/religion offers a religion of rational hope as an alternative to what he calls old-time religion. He also contends that sci/religion can offer a theory of human consciousness rooted in the interactions of subatomic particles and fields. Powell's view of religion is decidedly outdated, as he has missed the resurgence of religion and spirituality in the late 20th century. Despite this, he convincingly shows the ways that science has molded itself into a new faith, and his book will surely generate controversy and skepticism among scientists and religionists.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Scientific American
Science writer Powell casts science as the new religion, with Einstein as god. Sci/religion, as he calls it, offers a positive and immensely appealing alternative way to look at the world, a religion of rational hope. Even if you disagree with Powell's premise, his book is a delight to read--lively, well-informed, personable. And as a bonus, it provides an unusually graceful account of the history of cosmology.

FROM OUR EDITORS

"God does not play dice with the universe," physicist Albert Einstein once famously said. Scientific American staff writer Corey S. Powell believes that such statements and a lifetime of research earned Einstein the status of a postmodern prophet, a seminal figure in a new religious age. Powell supplements such arguments with intriguing discussions of the spiritual implications of recent scientific breakthroughs.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

We are living at a turning point in human spirituality -- akin to when Jesus or Buddha or Mohammed was alive -- and Einstein is its prophet. That is the audacious, provocative, and fascinating argument Corey Powell makes with dazzling eloquence in this extraordinary book. Powell dubs the new faith "sci/religion" and unmasks today's famous battle between science and religion as no more than a myth. Religion has always been where humanity looked to resolve the big issues -- be they everyday ones about morality or the overarching questions of the universe. Just a few decades ago, Pope Pius XII described the period explained by the scientific theory of the big bang as "the epoch when the cosmos came forth from the Hands of the Creator." Astronomers essentially agreed. This signified a very new relationship between scientists and priests. Indeed, Powell shows how science has completely taken over from theology in answering the overarching questions of the universe. Morality is a secular matter now determined by conversation rather than religious edict. Therefore, Powell contends, sci/religion is the only fully functioning religion now in operation.

For the first time, Powell identifies Einstein as the prophet of this religious revolution. When the most popular genius of the century said "God does not play dice," he wasn't merely being cute, he was creating a new kind of religion. Einstein called God The Old One, and, as Powell shows, he put The Old One into his equations describing his theory of relativity and so bound together two spheres of human thought, the spiritual and the scientific, in a way that had never previously been accomplished. The symbol in the relativity equations that stands for God is Lambda. It is also called the cosmological constant. It was also called Einstein's biggest blunder for a little while. Powell tells the story of how this controversial factor got into the equations, how it was accepted by the scientific community, then rejected, and then accepted again. Recent reports about how the universe is accelerating in its expansion are all based on this same factor, God in the equation. Einstein and his followers' use of the God factor in science has never before been recognized for what it is. In a tour de force Powell has forever identified it as clear evidence of an entirely new gnostic era, a new step in the history of human spirituality.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

For thousands of years, science and religion have occupied separate rooms in the house of culture. As science writer Powell points out, though, such a separation is hardly warranted in the modern world, where a new faith that he calls sci/religion captures both the mystical and the empirical. The prophet of sci/religion, Powell claims, is Einstein, whose search for a unifying factor in his relativity theory brought together the elements of physics and metaphysics. Einstein believed that a spirit vastly superior to the spirit of man is manifest in the laws of the universe, and he named this spirit Lamda. His Lamda principle became known as the cosmological constant, a force that dominated the universe and mitigated the inward pull of gravity. In this lively story, Powell traces the rise of the scientific community' s tendency to explain the workings of the universe in mystical ways, as they search for the forces dark energy, dark matter that unify and bring order to the universe. Powell argues that sci/religion offers a religion of rational hope as an alternative to what he calls old-time religion. He also contends that sci/religion can offer a theory of human consciousness rooted in the interactions of subatomic particles and fields. Powell' s view of religion is decidedly outdated, as he has missed the resurgence of religion and spirituality in the late 20th century. Despite this, he convincingly shows the ways that science has molded itself into a new faith, and his book will surely generate controversy and skepticism among scientists and religionists. (Aug.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A well-intended effort to join the quest for meaning in life with that for the origins of the universe-to wed, that is, faith and science. "The founder and greatest prophet of sci/religion"-as Discover magazine editor and debut author Powell calls this union-"had no . . . qualms about finding common ground between the material and the mystical." Neither, by Powell's account, do modern cosmologists such as Saul Perlmutter and Guth Linde, who have lately been turning up some strange anomalies in the universe-discovering, not so long ago, for instance, that the universe is still expanding-and who have proposed some novel explanations for them that accommodate what Einstein called "Lambda," the hidden quantum that might just as well be called God, and that "a number of theoretical cosmologists had decided that they needed . . . back in their equations." Confused? Well, there's more, and Powell's tour of such post-Einsteinian notions as "potential energy," the "multiverse," and "chaotic inflation" is enough to make a neophyte's head spin. Powell's argument is, at heart, a little far-fetched: that Einstein was incidentally interested in matters spiritual does not necessarily secure him prophet status, even with the generosity of metaphor, and his idea of the deity was less an Old Testament character than a particle of errant energy; and Powell too often gets carried away with formulations like "If Einstein was the Jesus of the new sci/religion, Edwin Powell Hubble was its Martin Luther." (But where is the observatory dome to which his 95 formulae have been nailed?) He's playing to a tough crowd, too, whichever way you turn: fundamentalists and creationists will not much like his ideas, whilehard-line materialists of the E.O. Wilson school will not be quick to embrace Powell's accommodating view of the supernatural. General, generous readers with an interest in science, however, will find this provocative, securely grounded in contemporary theories of physics, and at least worth pondering.

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