“Philip Comella, takes a fresh and bold look at the debate between science and religion—and attempts to go farther than any other book to unite them. For years, we have been led to believe that the universe traces its roots back to the Big Bang, a cataclysmic explosion of ethereal energy that resulted in the formation of the planets, stars, and everything in-between. Suppose, though, that the cosmos wasn’t, in fact, borne of a random eruption—but rather stems from the ever-evolving imagination of a multi-dimensional dreaming mind? Such a drastically different perspective would no doubt change the way we see not only ourselves, but also our place in the infinite realm of the universe. Such is the central premise of The Collapse of Materialism. Probing, well written, and thoroughly researched, Comella’s insightful volume serves as a treatise on the popular misconceptions that the world of science would lead us to believe about the origins—and subsequent development— of the universe. Comella paints the compelling picture of life as a purposeful, directed means to an end. Bolstered by a wide range of enlightening sources, including religion, eastern philosophy—and science itself—this book breaks important ground regarding the limited purview of life as we’ve come to know it, encouraging readers to explore the unfettered depths of a new vision of universal purpose.”

—Dominique Sessons,

Apex Reviews

PHILIP COMELLA is a practicing lawyer with a philosophy

degree whose mission in life is to expose the

fallacies in our current materialistic worldview and to

advance a more promising—and rational—outlook. In

pursuit of that mission, he spent 30 years studying the

foundational ideas to our current scientific worldview

and developing the arguments made in this book.

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Contents

Prologue

A Word about Endnotes

Introduction: The Realization that Together We Dream the World

Part 1: Revolution to the Truth

Chapter 1: The Next Scientific Revolution

Chapter 2: A Problem of Perspective

Chapter 3: A Response to the Main Objection

Chapter 4: The Connection between Mind and Matter

Chapter 5: The Mind's Ability to Dream

Chapter 6: Mind over External World

Part 2: The Failed Hypothesis of a Mind-Independent World

Chapter 7: The Origin of the Debate

Chapter 8: The Source of the Belief in a Mind-Independent World

Chapter 9: The Source of the Belief in a Self-Operating World

Chapter 10: Idealism Fails to Complete the Puzzle

Chapter 11: The Illusion Maker

Part 3: Material Science Lost in a Dream World

Section 1: The Big Bang as a Metaphor

Chapter 12: The Origin of Scientific Theory

Chapter 13: From Naive Realism to the Big Bang

Chapter 14: The Big Bang Explodes

Chapter 15: The Flatness and Horizon Problems

Chapter 16: The Amazing Inflating Universe

Chapter 17: A Material World That Should Not Be: The Antimatter Problem

Chapter 18: Twenty Invisible Universes

Chapter 19: This Accident Never Happened

Chapter 20: Creation Against the Tide of Entropy

Chapter 21: Material Science's Mathematical Laws

Chapter 22: The Melody Came First

Chapter 23: Material Science's Last Model

Section 2: Quantum Theory as the Physical Science to a Dream World

Chapter 24: Atomism Redefined

Chapter 25: Freezing a Phantom World

Chapter 26: To the Center of the Atom Hypothesis

Chapter 27: The Voyage Stops at the Quantum

Chapter 28: From Matter to Waves and Back Again

Chapter 29: The Many-Worlds Interpretation

Chapter 30: The World's Most Accurate Theory

Chapter 31: The Particle Zoo

Chapter 32: The God Particle

Chapter 33: The Universe That Appeared between Picture Frames

Section 3: Life as the Battle against Nothing

Chapter 34: Where Did the Struggle Begin?

Chapter 35: An Imperfect Darwinian World

Chapter 36: Darwin's Common Ancestor

Chapter 37: How Material Science Believes Life Began

Chapter 38: The Melody Came First: The Origin of Life

Chapter 39: Darwin's Common Ancestor Populates the Globe

Chapter 40: Darwin's Gradual Leaps

Chapter 41: The Illusion of Natural Selection

Chapter 42: The Bridge to a Better World

Part 4: On to the Real Heaven

Chapter 43: Guardians of the Dream

Chapter 44: The Surpassing Explanatory Power of the Real Dream Worldview

Chapter 45: One World

Chapter 46: The Real Heaven

Index

Endnotes

Bibliography

About the Author

Prologue

A NEW JOURNEY FOR SPACESHIP EARTH

Imagine that you are a passenger on a rocket ship hurting through outer space. Commanding the ship are scientists and religious leaders who have assumed the responsibility of flying the rocket to a new homeland. One day you wake up, look out the window, and wonder whether the pilots are heading the ship in the right direction. You begin to doubt whether you have paid enough attention to the route they have taken and you slowly get up the courage to enter the pilot's cabin and ask them a few questions about where exactly the ship is heading. After all, you only have one chance to make it home.

Today we all ride a rocketship: the planet Earth. The journey we are on is called life. Like the rocket ship, the leaders of science and religion direct the way we carry out our lives, and we rely upon those leaders to take us to a better place, whether we call it the promised land, heaven, or simply a land of peace and prosperity.

For most of the voyage, we have sat quietly in the back of the ship as we have let others, whom we believe to be smarter than we are, guide us along this journey. But like the passengers on the rocket ship, many of us are beginning to realize that because we only have one life to lead, we should start asking a few questions about our route and destination.

The group commanding our own rocket ship follows a system of belief called scientific materialism. In this view of the world, matter is the ultimate reality; the universe (or universes) arose from a random, purposeless explosion; and God is dead. We may not know it--since we are sititng in the back of the ship and not paying much attention--but this mind-set is controlling the flight of the ship, permeating our culture and society. We are clearly not heading toward any sort of promised land.

Materialism separates us from Mother Nature, other people, and God. It fixes us into categories--race, religion, nationalities, political parties--that mask the fundamental unity of all humankind.

It is time to set spaceship Earth on a new journey. It is time to challenge the thought leaders who have set the ship's guidance system following the methods of materialism, and who are heading this planet toward disaster.

So hold on to your seats as we challenge the core principles of scientific materialism and show that we can take another, more sensible route. We can instead steer this great ship towards a place that does not separate us, but unites us; that turns the mystical belief that we are One into a scientific truth; and that fulfills both the visions of science and the dreams of God.