Rating: 
Summary: Not for the religious
Review: I am looking for a religion to fulfil my needs as an individual. This book is to much logic and to little intuition. If you are looking for a lot of scientific babble, then this book is for you. In my opinion, it didn't help my journey at all.
Rating: 
Summary: A marvelous book, but...
Review: I bought my first copy of this book eight years ago, just after completing some thermodynamics research that required me to dig more deeply into the mathematics of the subject than I'd ever done before. After reading Davies' book, I was embarrassed to admit that I'd never considered how remarkable it is that mathematics can be used to study the universe so profoundly, and with such success. Davies' book is simply marvelous. For example, the discussion of Conway's game of Life was fascinating. Even more so was Davies' explanation of Goedel's proof and the implications thereof. So by all means buy this book, ponder it, fool around with Life (see any of several websites devoted to it), and enjoy.However, I must disagree with Davies on one important issue: he seems to believe that the primary purpose of religion is to explain the nature of the universe, or of God himself. His discussion between the imaginary atheist and the imaginary theist (the atheist wins, of course) is particularly wide of the mark. I can't speak knowledgeably about every religion, but the purpose of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism is emphatically NOT to explain the universe or to understand the mind of God. Instead, they claim to be God's revelation, made at His initiative, of how we go astray and how to get back into a right relation with Him and our fellow humans. The miserable job that most of us do of living out our religions is regrettable, and the Old Testament is indeed disconcerting to many modern readers (including Davies), but those issues should not confuse the reader regarding what these religions claim as their origin and purpose. A good book to read after this one is C. S. Lewis' God in the Dock (i.e., God on Trial). Lewis, who was once an atheist, noted more than 50 years ago that science had advanced far beyond concepts that we can relate to through our senses and everyday experience, concluding that "all we can really know about Reality is its mathematics". Davies clearly agrees, here and in The Matter Myth. Lewis also mentions that too many Christians make the mistake of believing that the Bible exists to satisfy their curiosity about the universe, an admonition that Davies might have read with profit.
Rating: 
Summary: God Thing - Is There One?
Review: I feel now that there is no god. Nothing is omnipresent or all-knowing. We have been duped so to call your book the Mind of God is an oxymoron. Whatever I had undergone from religoin is foul and nothing sees or hears me in the last 13 years so I doubt if anyone will see or hear a god, let alone know it. If you wish to know what has occurred to me for the last decade, let me know. It will blow your mind.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Ideas on Life, the Universe and Everything
Review: I found the ideas in this book to be quite interesting. There were so many ideas about the origin of the universe that I've never heard before. The author does a good job of making them understandable to the non-physicist. I bought this book to try and answer some of my own questions about the meaning of life. However, I walked away from it with more questions than answers. The universe is such an enigma that the more you study it the less you realize you know. This is a pretty good book if you're into this sort of thing. I thought it seemed to end quite abruptly though without making some conclusions, so I give it 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Atheism is not the only rational option.
Review: I read this book while going through a period of atheistic thought which at the time I believed was the only viewpoint consistent with reality. The main virtue of this book for me was to make me understand that believing in a rational universe that is describable by physical "laws" does not necessarily preclude the existence of some form of god and that the scientific culture of atheism is just that: a culture. Although some individual mythologies of various religions such as the garden of eden or the trillion year long universal cycles of hinduism may be put in question by scientific discoveries, the concept of an intelligent creation is consistent with science and even supported by some of science's more recent discoveries. I emphasise that this book is not an attempt to prove the existance of god or a religious book by conventional standards. It is however an ideal cure for depressing atheistic philosophy and provides some great comebacks to loud,groovy existentialist, smarty pants at parties. It is a bit of a heavy going read (it took me a couple of reads to really understand it) but stick with it, it is worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, with a qualification...
Review: In a word, fascinating. Wonderfully lucid account of what modern cosmology and science tell us about the origin and nature of our universe. However, in my view, Western science is very much limited by its own, unquestioned, metaphysical assumptions. Many of which I think Davies has innocently swallowed. Don't get me wrong, Davies is a brilliant man, and a masterful writer. I just think he's hamstrung by the unquestioned metaphysical assumptions of the Western science that he's had years of training in, and made his career in. The main flaw with Western science is that it generally assumes (without analysis) that there is a physical reality which exists independently of our perceptions and conceptions, but which we can still somehow know by means of those same perceptions and conceptions. This is a metaphysical position that cannot, in fact, withstand analysis. For those who wish to know more on this point, I'd direct them to a wonderful book called Choosing Reality, by B. Alan Wallace. It's a very fond wish of mine that Davies would read that book and tell me what he thinks!
Rating:
Summary: Able to answer mind numbing questions in a single bound!
Review: Keeping it simple, this book can be read by anyone with a high school math education and a desire to investigate our exsistence. I found myself reading a page and saying to myself "Ok, that answers that question but how do they explain ____", only to turn the page and have the author say "now your probably wondering how we can explain ____". Even if one does not agree with all of the research in this book it seems the main purpose is still achieved and that is "To gain a brief glimpse into the mind of god."
Rating:
Summary: A Disappointment
Review: Mathematical physicist Paul Davies offers a grand synthesis of the possibility of a "theory of everything" vis-Ã -vis physics - leading to the nature of physical laws, mathematical jargon, and philosophy by exposing various perspectives of the existence of the universe. Written with a general audience in mind The Mind of God presupposes no prior knowledge of math, physics, computer science, etc., which makes it easy for the reader to stay afloat.
Davies's purpose is to broaden the horizon and enhance the perspective of his readers. He does this by laying down a mathematical framework of reality from a physicist's point of view for a better understanding of our world and the universe in which we live. A framework, like a model, is something worth remembering when one confronts a situation. Davies's situation offers a scientific perspective to finding a rational explanation and meaning in a universe that is persuasively personal and subjective. Davies's book takes two but interrelated directions. The first is an objective understanding of the universe to support his position of a "process thought" for adopting an open universe (this is what I accept also). The second is a subjective understanding of the universe that appeals to Davies's proposed religious-philosophical mysticism that our existence has a fundamental goal and existential purpose. Davies says, "The future is not implicit in the present: there is a choice of alternatives. Thus nature is attributed a sort of freedom... This freedom comes about through the abandonment of reductionism" (181-182). Davies recognizes that "the world is more than the sum of its parts" and that physical systems are "the existence of many different levels of structure" (Ibid). Despite tensions of order and novelty of an open universe, Davies perhaps warrants his rationality of an open view, which powerfully personifies a being and a personal universe. Thus, an openness of God is analogous to warranting a "process thought" to "open systems," which stresses the "openness and indeterminism of nature." Process thought, indeed necessitates the universe expanding or changing since it has been observable in being in flux and in the direction of becoming, in contrast to a "rigid mechanistic view of the universe," that the universe was once thought. I now turn to Davies's second direction. And this is his appeal to a religious-philosophical mysticism that our existence has a fundamental goal and existential purpose. This second direction, once again, is interrelated to the first direction just mentioned above by the fact that one can truly have a meaningful existence (subjective authentic experience) in the world shared and lived in by others (objective universal reality) that one contributes to create and define. By appealing to mysticism Davies takes his own leap of faith into the infinite "beyond" rational explanation by saying, "If we wish to progress beyond, we have to embrace a different concept of 'understanding' from that of rational explanation. Possibly the mystical path is a way to such an understanding" (232). It was rather disappointing to me that Davies abandoned his own scientific discipline of rational explanation of the universe in favor of embracing a religious mysticism. If Davies seeks to examine the great questions of existence by providing "an entertaining and provocative tour of recent developments in theoretical physics," he succeeds. However, he fails his own work because he deconstructs his own work and "process thought" by resorting to a "mystical path" in the end. If it is Davies's intention to end his work open-ended on mysticism then he leaves knowledge open for the reader to discover his or her own meaning in the universe. In this respect, Paul Davies succeeds in writing a brilliant exposé and nothing more.
Rating:
Summary: A Disappointment
Review: Mathematical physicist Paul Davies offers a grand synthesis of the possibility of a "theory of everything" vis-à-vis physics - leading to the nature of physical laws, mathematical jargon, and philosophy by exposing various perspectives of the existence of the universe. Written with a general audience in mind The Mind of God presupposes no prior knowledge of math, physics, computer science, etc., which makes it easy for the reader to stay afloat.
Davies's purpose is to broaden the horizon and enhance the perspective of his readers. He does this by laying down a mathematical framework of reality from a physicist's point of view for a better understanding of our world and the universe in which we live. A framework, like a model, is something worth remembering when one confronts a situation. Davies's situation offers a scientific perspective to finding a rational explanation and meaning in a universe that is persuasively personal and subjective. Davies's book takes two but interrelated directions. The first is an objective understanding of the universe to support his position of a "process thought" for adopting an open universe (this is what I accept also). The second is a subjective understanding of the universe that appeals to Davies's proposed religious-philosophical mysticism that our existence has a fundamental goal and existential purpose. Davies says, "The future is not implicit in the present: there is a choice of alternatives. Thus nature is attributed a sort of freedom... This freedom comes about through the abandonment of reductionism" (181-182). Davies recognizes that "the world is more than the sum of its parts" and that physical systems are "the existence of many different levels of structure" (Ibid). Despite tensions of order and novelty of an open universe, Davies perhaps warrants his rationality of an open view, which powerfully personifies a being and a personal universe. Thus, an openness of God is analogous to warranting a "process thought" to "open systems," which stresses the "openness and indeterminism of nature." Process thought, indeed necessitates the universe expanding or changing since it has been observable in being in flux and in the direction of becoming, in contrast to a "rigid mechanistic view of the universe," that the universe was once thought. I now turn to Davies's second direction. And this is his appeal to a religious-philosophical mysticism that our existence has a fundamental goal and existential purpose. This second direction, once again, is interrelated to the first direction just mentioned above by the fact that one can truly have a meaningful existence (subjective authentic experience) in the world shared and lived in by others (objective universal reality) that one contributes to create and define. By appealing to mysticism Davies takes his own leap of faith into the infinite "beyond" rational explanation by saying, "If we wish to progress beyond, we have to embrace a different concept of 'understanding' from that of rational explanation. Possibly the mystical path is a way to such an understanding" (232). It was rather disappointing to me that Davies abandoned his own scientific discipline of rational explanation of the universe in favor of embracing a religious mysticism. If Davies seeks to examine the great questions of existence by providing "an entertaining and provocative tour of recent developments in theoretical physics," he succeeds. However, he fails his own work because he deconstructs his own work and "process thought" by resorting to a "mystical path" in the end. If it is Davies's intention to end his work open-ended on mysticism then he leaves knowledge open for the reader to discover his or her own meaning in the universe. In this respect, Paul Davies succeeds in writing a brilliant exposé and nothing more.
Rating:
Summary: Provides a good comparison between religion and science
Review: Not only that, the author makes good connections between them. Unfortunatly, other than learning new concepts about curent theories, facts, physics and metaphysics as well as it's religious interactions. The answer comes to the same. WE KNOW NOTHING, YET!!! I really wasn't sure if this deserved a full 5 stars. Reason be, the author says that this book is written in plain english. Well, by trade, I'm a technical support agent and everyone knows when a technician has a conversation with someone who doesn't know the lingo, it really sounds like jiberish. So, part of my job is to explain in plain english how to run/maintain and fix a certain system/part/peripheral. I do not find that this book was written for the begginner like it was claimed. In fact, I needed third party references in scientific termonologies to really grasp what is said in this book and I'll probably even end up reading it again. I'll repost my reviews after I muddle through the rest of the scientific jargon and try to get a better understanding (mental pictures) of what he writes. In closing, if, you are willing enought to put effort into understanding this book like using 3rd party reference material, or, your already versed in physics and (mathematics a little less). Then I recommend it. I found the information usefull and enlightening in helping me understanding a little bit more about my surroundings and they're interactions, that really was what (based on what I understood) I was looking for in the first place. P.S, a book like this needs illustrations and a good glossary.
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