In the book Päs argues that the findings of quantum mechanics entail the conclusion that everything in the world is entangled with everything else so that physical reality is actually just one thing. This is the ancient idea, Päs points out, called substance monism.
The book is interesting despite aspects of his discussion of quantum theory being over my head, but I had some philosophical reservations about a couple of things in his narrative.
Päs seems to claim at some points that physical reality is all One and at other places that all reality is One, and he seems to assume they are the same claim. In fact, though, these are two separate assertions. He apparently assumes without argument that physical reality is the only reality, but this is a metaphysical assumption for which a reader would like to see some reason for accepting.
It might well be that Päs is right in asserting that the physical universe is somehow an entangled unity, but it could still be the case that there's a transcendent realm, or God, that's distinct from the physical cosmos.
In other words, monism might prevail in the physical universe, but reality as a whole could be dualistic, but Päs ignores this possibility. It makes a difference, though, since if there is no God, or if, as Päs sometimes suggests, God just is the universe (pantheism) there are some serious moral conclusions which follow. Päs alludes to these in his concluding chapter. On pages 286 and 287, for instance, he writes that, "monism, just like science or nature in general, won't provide us with a moral compass," and then adds,
monistic ideas and the appeal to nature have also been abused to justify racism and social Darwinism. To avoid such perversions, we have to rely on moral values that have emerged and stood the test of orchestrating our social relationships over the course of history.But why think that racism or social Darwinism are "perversions"? If the natural world is ultimate and if it's just a cold, impersonal cosmos that cares nothing for anything in it, if it provides us with no moral compass, upon what does he base his judgments as to what's perverse or morally wrong?
He leaves himself no basis for moral judgment other than his own subjective whims, and how he can say that his whims are "right" and someone else's are "wrong"?
Päs repeats this puzzling line of thought further down the page when he states that this, "doesn't imply that it is entirely hopeless to think that monism may make us less selfish and more open and tolerant."
Once again he's dragging in a moral judgment from who knows where when he implies that being selfish and intolerant are grave moral faults. Yet unless the standard he's basing his judgment on is personal, morally good, and able to hold us to account for our moral choices - a standard that only theism can provide - there's no reason to think that selfishness and intolerance are in any way wrong.
He appears to be piggy-backing on traditional Judeo-Christian moral thinking while dismissing the truth of Judeo-Christianity. Nevertheless, if Päs is right, if the only god that might exist is the pantheistic deity (i.e. the universe itself) then in the words of English essayist Alexander Pope, whatever is is right.
Modern man, of which Päs is representative, is in a pickle. He doesn't want to accept Pope's dictum and at the same time he resists accepting the only circumstance - the existence of the classical Judeo-Christian God - which would confute Pope.
So, like Päs, modern man lives as if the classical God exists, he poaches his moral sentiments from the Judeo-Christian tradition while insisting that that tradition is bogus.
He's like a man who wants to borrow money from a bank, but the whole way to the bank he scoffs at the belief that banks actually exist.
