Rendering verdicts in good judicial systems requires evidence rightly presented and accepted by juries and judges. So too historians ponder primary and secondary sources seeking to discern what actually happened long ago, looking for evidence enabling them to determine what’s true. A similar thought process takes place when we think about the existence and nature of God, for there is, as Josh McDowell declared long ago, Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Much such evidence is now available in God: The Science, the Evidence (Palomar editions, c. 2025; Kindel; originally published in French as Dieu, La science, Les preuves, c. 2021) by Michel-Yves Bollore and Oliver Bonnassies. That this 600 page non-fiction book has sold 400,000 copies in Europe is truly amazing! It is, they say, “the culmination of nearly four years of research conducted in collaboration with a team of around twenty high-level international specialists and scientists. Its objective is unique: to shed light for you on the question of the existence or non-existence of a creator God, one of the most important questions of our lives which is being posed today in completely new terms” (p. 19).
For three centuries (1650-1950)—an era generally called modernity—scientific work gradually eclipsed theology as the highest and most certain form of knowledge. Hand-in-hand with the scientific revolution came a revival of philosophical materialism, the dogma that matter-in-motion is all there is. Claiming to be utterly scientific, materialistic ideologies such as Marxism, Freudianism, and Scientism enjoyed their day. But then, a century ago, small cracks began to appear in the materialist edifice. “During the first half of the twentieth century, belief in a simple, mechanical, and deterministic world was shattered by a more precise confirmation of the principles of quantum mechanics and its postulates of indeterminacy” (p. 28). Drawing upon the best of current thought, the authors want “to gather into one volume the most up-to-date rational arguments for the possible existence of a creator God” (p. 31).
The authors begin by clarifying what they mean by scientific evidence, differentiating “absolute” from “relative” proofs. Absolute truths exist in mathematics and logic, but only relative proofs can be discovered through scientific work, which must deal with “evidence of varying degrees of strength, the accumulation of which can nevertheless lead us to a conviction beyond all reasonable doubt” (p. 40). As the history of science reveals, our understanding of the physical world continually expands and undergoes endless revisions. What we find most persuasive generally “arises from the presence of multiple, independent, and converging pieces of evidence” (p. 49). So when we look for scientific evidence demonstrating the reality of God we should acknowledge that we must rest content with relative or probable proofs.
One of the most highly probable scientific maxims is the second law of thermodynamics. Einstein declared it “the first law of all science.” Notable 19th century thinkers demonstrated its importance, fleshing out the ramifications of its central tenet—entropy—detailing what Sir Arthur Eddington called the cosmological “arrow of time.” Time is a linear, not a cyclical phenomenon, and ultimately the universe will collapse in a heat death. “The Universe is like a fire crackling away in a fireplace. Subject to the laws of thermodynamics, both are destined to burn themselves out over time.” The logs gradually become embers, which die in due time. Watching the fire we can rightly conclude that “since the fire is being consumed at a measurable rate, it cannot have been burning forever. If it had always existed, then it would also have burned down and gone out an infinitely particular point in the past” (p. 64). This fact gives substance to an ancient philosophical position, known as the Kalam cosmological argument, which holds: 1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause; 2) The Universe had a beginning; 3) Therefore the Universe has a cause.
Working out the implications of entropy (the central component of the second law of thermodynamics), physicists a century ago began to consider what came to be called the “big bang” origin of the universe. As Einstein’s theories of relativity became accepted, the notion that the the material world was eternal and fixed began to dissolve. In 1922 a young Russian, Alexander Friedmann, proposed the possibility of an expanding universe. Five years later a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître, pushed Einstein’s insights to their logical conclusions. “Lemaitre summarized his conclusion thus: ‘We can reason that space began with the primeval atom and that the beginning of space marked the beginning of time’” (p. 91). His views were soon verified by Edwin Hubble, an astronomer looking into deepest space through his new telescope on Mount Wilson in California and observing an ever-expanding cosmos.
Shocked at such findings, Fred Hoyle, an English astrophysicist, tried to dismiss the notion, coining the phrase “big bang” to ridicule it. But in 1964, almost accidentally, two men detected Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), something that could only have resulted from an instantaneous beginning of the universe. Ex nihilo—out of nothing! Within 20 years confirmations of the “big bang” led to the development of what’s called the “Standard Model” embraced by most all physicists. It is “supported by such a large number of probative observations that the vast majority of cosmologists now accept its central claims” (p. 107). George Smoot, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize, said that what scientists now see is “‘like seeing God’” (p. 97). And he was right, for the “big bang” makes it “clear that the Universe proceeds from a cause that is neither temporal, spatial, nor material. In other words, it proceeds from a transcendent, non-natural cause at the origin of all that exists and, as we shall see, at the origin of the extreme fine-tuning of the Universe’s initial parameters and the laws of physics and biology, which are indispensable for the existence and evolution of atoms, stars, and complex life” (p. 100). Indeed, Arno A. Penzias, 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics, said the evidence shows “‘that not only is there a creation of matter but also the creation of space and time.’” What we now know, he said, is “‘exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole’” (p. 109).
The Standard Model gained currency despite several decades of furious opposition. Indeed, some of its proponents were persecuted by the academic establishment! Philosophical materialists realized it challenged their most important assumption, that there’s nothing but matter that has always existed. “To save their ideology, they had to silence at all costs the scientists researching and publishing these theories. Herein lies the great interest of the history of these persecutions. The materialists would not have unleashed such extreme violence upon scientists who theorized the expansion of the Universe and the Big Bang had they not been convinced that these theories made a strong case for the existence of God” (p. 128). In Russia, Alexander Friedmann declared: “Gentlemen, we have demonstrated that the Universe has not existed forever. It had a beginning, several billion years ago, in a far-off age when it was no bigger than a speck of dust!” (p. 137). Though his students applauded his work, the Bolsheviks did not! They realized it refuted their doctrinaire materialism and tried to silence him. Friedmann remained defiant though soon thereafter he died under suspicious conditions. But during the 1930s Joseph Stalin sought to silence his disciples, calling them “Lemaître’s henchmen.” The Secretary General of the Communist Party of Leningrad “summed up the Soviet stance toward the Big Bang in a few vitriolic words, calling Lemaître and his crew ‘imposter scientists who seek to bring back to life the fairy tale according to which the world came out from nothing!’ His objective was to savagely hunt down Lemaître’s ‘reactionary scientists.’ Anyone who spoke or wrote about expansion was systematically eliminated” (p. 240). A number of other scientists suffered under Stalin’s great “purges” in the ‘30s and were imprisoned or executed. Similarly, in Germany physicists believing in the expansion of the cosmos were persecuted, with many of them (especially if they were Jews) fleeing to the United States. But even here they often suffered opposition—evident in subtle discrimination and forfeited career opportunities. But ultimately the evidence proved overwhelming, and the Standard Model prevailed. Even its most influential critic, Fred Hoyle, ultimately accepted it and ended his life espousing a kind of deism.
Having devoted many pages to the importance of the Big Bang, Bollore and Bonnassies focus on implications of our “finely tuned” cosmos that “will blow you away” (p. 182). “The Universe now looks like a big ‘setup,’ an incredibly precise piece of machinery whose every part shows stunning fine-tunings of design—complex cogs that mesh together miraculously, creating the conditions necessary for the existence and functioning of the whole” (p. 182). There are a dozen or so of these complex cogs, including: the force of gravity; the electromagnetic force; the strong and weak atomic forces; the speed of light; the mass of protons and electrons. These all involve extraordinary numbers which could only have come about by chance or “from the complex calculations of a highly intelligent creator God.” Everything we know about the cosmos leads to the conclusion that these numbers inform everything that exists. “For some of these numbers, a very slight variation by even a distant decimal point would have yielded an unrecognizable Universe, and we would not be here to talk about it. This is the essence of the ‘fine tuning’ principle” (p. 185). The possibility that all this “just happened” is simply beyond belief! Indeed, one cosmologist says that this fine tuning can be compared to archer hitting a one “‘square centimetre target 15 billion light years away’ “ (p. 197). In the face of all the evidence, materialists believing everything came to be through blind chance dramatically illustrate a blind faith. Indeed, reasonable people should surely conclude there’s a God Who designed its all! The Universe came to be in an instant, and its intricate laws shaped a world that sustains everything that is.
Turning from physics to biology we encounter similar evidences for God. “Modern biology has shed light on the incredible complexity of even the smallest living cell, which in fact bears a resemblance to an ultra-sophisticated factory. We now know that the transition to life was an extremely unlikely and complex event that took place over a relatively short span of time. Consequently, the thesis that life emerged by pure chance in a Universe that was not specifically designed to be hospitable to it is no longer tenable. A biological fine-tuning is added to the cosmological” (p. 229). The authors believe there is an “invisible hand” orchestrating the organic world. There’s a great chasm separating the inorganic and organic worlds, and that chasm seems to be getting wider every day. So far, “no definite intermediate steps have been identified between the most complex inert matter and the least complicated life forms currently known” (p. 239). Tiny cells—and their even tinier components such as DNA—are incredibly complex entities made up of thousands of parts. That a single cell could arise by chance is virtually impossible. To Chandra Wickramasinghe, professor of applied mathematics and astronomy at University College Cardiff and former collaborator with Fred Hoyle: “‘The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 1 to a number with 40,000 noughts after it … It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence’” (p. 257).
Having looked at evidence in physics and biology, the authors provide fascinating chapters dealing with significant scientists. One chapter simply collects quotations from 100 eminent thinkers, many of them Nobel Prize winners. For example, Alfred Kastler, winner of the 1966 Nobel Prize in Physics and the inventor of the laser, said: “The idea that the world, the material universe, created itself, seems to me patently absurd. I do not conceive of the world without a creator, which is to say without a god. For a physicist, a single atom is so complicated, so pregnant with intelligence, that the materialist universe simply makes no sense.” Again, said he: “There is no chance of explaining the emergence of life and its evolution by the interaction of chance forces. Other forces are at work” (p. 265).
Another chapter cites studies indicating what today’s scientists believe. A paper detailing a century of Nobel Prizes “showed that 90% of Nobel prize winners identified with some religion and that two-thirds of them have been Christians” (p. 297). Only 10% identified themselves as atheists. Additional chapters examine the religious views of two of the 20th century greatest thinkers—Albert Einstein and Kurt Godel. To Einstein: “‘everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naïve’” (p. 310). Though everyone’s heard of Einstein, only a select few know anything about Godel. But his mathematical “peers considered him a singular genius. The ‘Gödelian revolution’ is considered one of the greatest transformations in the history of mathematics and logic” (p. 322). He was deeply theistic, noting that his religion was rather “similar to church religion”—indeed the Christian faith. Toward the end of his life he set forth an ontological argument designed to demonstrate the existence of God, reviving the insights of St Anselm and others.
The strongest part of God, the Science, the Evidence, is the material devoted to contemporary science. But Bollore and Bonnassies insist there are many significant kinds of inquiries, each needing an appropriate way of thinking. So in the second half of the book they delve into realms of apologetics—evidences “outside the sciences.” This includes a thoughtful appraisal of the Bible. It is truly remarkable that a small nation in a semi-arid land, lacking great cities or universities, could incubate a book “which contained a goldmine of knowledge about humanity and the cosmos.” It had little in common with the writings of their pagan neighbors. It refused to deify nature and insisted on high moral standards. Amazingly: “Most of the Bible’s claims about the nature and origin of the cosmos would remain unverifiable and inaccessible to human reason throughout antiquity and for many centuries thereafter. But over the last century or so, modern science has proved them true” (p. 339). The Bible is so true about so many things that it’s clearly much more than a purely-human collection of writings. The authors assess and repudiate several of the reputed “errors” of the Bible and show that “each one turns out to contain surprising cosmological and anthropological truths.” Critics frequently fail to show any mastery of the material. “It’s been said that to err is human. If we can’t find a single error in the Bible’s thousands of pages, that may suggest that its inspiration lies elsewhere, beyond the human realm” (p. 380).
Turning to the central figure in the Christian tradition—Jesus—we find solid reasons to believe Him to be the Son of God. Ancient historians, both Jewish (Josephus) and pagan (Tacitus), provide historical evidence concerning Him, and multiple, credible Christian writings force us to choose what to make of Him. After evaluating various views—that He was simply wise teacher or Jewish prophet or charlatan or madman—the authors conclude He was what the Christian Church has always claimed: God Incarnate. Given that fact, Old Testament prophecies make sense. The incredible claims He made for Himself (e.g. forgiving sins) make sense. The behavior of his disciples following His resurrection make sense. The evidence that demands a verdict leads to belief in Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.
There is also strong philosophical evidence demonstrating the existence of God. As C.S. Lewis showed, in Mere Christianity, there is a universal moral sense pointing to the Author of an everlasting ethical code. Following Lewis leads us to an “exciting approach: an exercise in listening to the interior voice of our conscience, whose echo also can be perceived, though in a manner totally different to the echo of the Big Bang. St. Augustine once gave this worthy piece of advice: ‘Do not go outside yourself, but enter into yourself, for truth dwells in the interior self’” (p. 487). Why is it that something inside us says “no” or “don’t” when we envision doing some kinds of things? If there’s nothing wrong with stealing an unattended car why do we feel guilty when doing it? Yet many moderns say you’re free to do whatever you please. Thus Jean-Paul Sartre pondered a passage in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov that said: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.” To Sartre, that meant: “Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself.” He stands alone, radically free to forge his own morality, for if there’s no God we find no “values or commands” to guide us apart from our personal inclinations. Sartre’s purely subjective morality was endorsed by an eminent materialist philosopher, Richard Taylor: “‘In a world without God, no purpose can be right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgment. This means that it is impossible to condemn war, persecution or crime as evil. Nor can anyone admire brotherhood, equality and love. Because in the universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say that you are right and I am wrong’” (p. 490). Anyone upset by the genocidal regimes in Germany, Russia, China, and Cambodia understand their actions by understanding their godless philosophies.
Countering the philosophies of men such as Sartre and Taylor, Bollore and Bonnassies urge us to mine the riches of the Western philosophical tradition, beginning with Plato, “the first philosopher” to sense that there is a non-material world pointing to a “world soul” responsible for all that is. Plato thought logic and mathematics enable us to discern that there is a “great organizer” who shaped the universe. His student, Aristotle, “constructed a much more complex argument, arriving at God through the idea of motion.” To him: “Everything moving is moved by something else, which is moved by something else.” There “cannot be an infinite series of movers. The series must stop somewhere. Otherwise, there would be no movement at all” (p. 496). In fine: There must be a Prime Mover. Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas incorporated Greek philosophy into a comprehensive worldview that still proves persuasive for serious thinkers, as was evident in the resurgence of theistic philosophy following WWII.
Highly accomplished philosophers have showed the shallowness of much that had transpired in modern times. A variety of modern “objections to the existence of God had been carefully sifted, weighed, and ultimately found unconvincing.” Metaphysics once again began a serious discipline. “Never before have so many and such good books been written about proofs for God’s existence than in our time” (p. 502). An impressive of brilliant thinkers—including Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, William Craig, Robert Koons, and Edward Feser—demonstrate how effectively philosophers can argue for God’s existence. Many of them show that “the correspondence between the free speculation of mathematicians and the physical reality of the world remains inexplicable apart from a coincidence bordering on the miraculous. This seeming impasse actually points toward its solution: mathematical formulae preceded the formation of the world; or, in other words, the world was conceived by an intelligent being” (p. 505).
A French mathematician, René Thom, noted that these abstract formulae should persuade us that “‘Plato’s theory—that the universe is being informed by eternal static ideas—is a very natural and philosophically simple explanation’” (p. 505).
The remarkable book concludes that: “Materialism has always been just a belief, but today it increasingly appears as an irrational belief” (p. 535). Evidence disproving it has been accumulating, and the authors believe: “Our book is unique in offering a comprehensive panorama—including cosmology, philosophy, ethics, and historical enigmas. This richness of perspectives is possible only because evidence for God’s existence appears in every field of human study” (p. 536). “As Paul of Tarsus writes in Acts 17:26-27, ‘God made them [men], so that they would search for Him, and if possible, grope for Him and find Him, who in fact is not far from each one of us.’ These words encourage us to persevere in our search. We hope this book will help in that endeavour” (p. 538). And, indeed, it does!
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