Gaj: The End of Religion offers a concise survey of our metaphors for “God” from 600 BC to the present in the service of a single compelling argument: The pantheists were right; “God” is not an individual but the very substance of the universe. This argument, as supported by quantum physics, is explored with reference to such thinkers as Mary Magdalene, Jesus, and Muhammad; Descartes, Spinoza, and Coleridge; and Nietzsche, Carl Jung, and Teilhard de Chardin. The implications of pantheism for our personal and global worldviews are explored in the context of religion, philosophy, quantum physics, self-knowledge and selfhood, notions of good and evil, and the current intertwining of church and state in both North America and the Middle East. At the close of the second chapter, the book's thesis is framed as follows: “Picking up where the philosophers left off, the physicists of the twentieth century reconciled the pantheistic core of the pre-Platonic worldview with the rational truths of empirical science. They proved the pantheists right, and therein lies the end of religion as a mediator in our access to Gaj” (God/Allah/Jehovah). reviewer's comments
The book “calls on us to change our paradigms, to view ourselves as part of a whole not in the sense of contractually unified individuals, but in the sense of a truly holistic and connected universe.” “The beauty of Lewis's work is that it forces the reader to question the basics and explore new avenues of philosophical thought.” -- Matthew Eckel, The McGill Daily about hay river books Hay River Books is an on-line publisher and retailer of new nonfiction and fiction titles that fall loosely into the category “post-millennial.” The press is run as a bottom-up company, with its published writers also contributing as proof readers, copy editors, typesetters, designers, marketers, and developmental editors. The press publishes philosophy, social commentary, and genre-defying fiction and poetry, some of which is illustrated. |