Our colleague William Dembski sure did not choose the austere title of his important new book, Being as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information, with a view to dumbing down the content. In this video he explains what he means by “being” and “communion.” In a nutshell, it’s that things are only “real” by virtue of their having reality “conferred on them” by their relationship to other things, and these relationships are a matter of the exchange of information. So material stuff is “downstream” from an immaterial reality, that of information. Got that?
For Jews and Christians, this would probably mean that God as the ultimate source of information, wisdom, thought, ideas — call it what you will — with which he infuses the world, is also the source of reality. But that’s not the only way to understand what Dembski is saying.
Dr. Dembski explains it better than I can. The book, it seems to me, has the potential of striking at the heart of the debate over materialism in a way that even arguments about Darwinian evolution, for example, do not. It’s heady, but couldn’t be more vital.
If you live in the U.S., be sure to pre-order your copy of Being as Communion now. You’ll receive a pre-publication discount, $22.95 including shipping versus $34.95, that can’t be beat.
And if you’re in the Seattle area, be sure to join us for an evening with Bill Dembski where he’ll preview the new book, July 16 at McCaw Hall.
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