(Paris) A divine surprise for its authors: a book claiming to “prove” the existence of God in the light of modern knowledge of the Universe is a resounding success, but leaves many scientists more than skeptical.
Posted yesterday at 10:18 a.m.
Aided by an extensive promotional campaign, God, science, evidence, co-written by engineer Michel-Yves Bolloré and polytechnicien Olivier Bonnassies, passed the bar of 100,000 copies sold on Monday, three months after its publication.
Éditions Trédaniel, specializing in spirituality and well-being, had not known such enthusiasm since the release in 2014 of Three minutes to understand the Big Bang of the Bogdanoffs. The two brothers, who have since died of COVID-19, have also participated in God, science, evidence and hosted a conference on the book in November.
“We made nearly a thousand entries, it stunned us! enthuses Michel-Yves Bolloré. This Catholic, brother of the industrialist Vincent Bolloré, worked for three years to write “the book that did not exist”, he confided to AFP.
The one who “in a single volume, accessible to all”, would tell how the astronomical discoveries of the XXand century have brought the question of Creation back to the fore.
“Great Watchmaker”
The point: for nearly four centuries, with Galileo, Newton, Darwin, “the sciences have shown that a creator was not necessary to explain the Universe. So much so that at the beginning of the XXand century, materialism triumphed.
Then, “like a great pendulum”, the movement set off again in the opposite direction with the discoveries of the Big Bang, the expansion of the Universe, its thermal death… So many “pebbles in the shoes” of the materialists according to the author, who undermined the thesis of an immutable Universe since it has a “beginning and an end”.
The chapter “the thriller of the Big Bang” retraces how this theory struggled to impose itself.
The one claiming that 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe was compressed into a single point, a “singularity” in space-time. Where the laws of physics don’t work, and no scientist can describe.
It is from this singularity that the authors draw metaphysical conclusions, arguing that it can only be explained by a “great watchmaker”, at the origin of all the adjustments that make the Universe exist, and that the life appeared on Earth.
“We maintain that today, there is a body of evidence which tends to show that the thesis of a creator god is the right one, versus that of a purely material Universe which no longer holds water”, summarizes Michel -Yves Bollore.
“Naivety”
In the scientific community, including believers, the approach hardly convinces, even disturbs.
“It is the notion of proof that is controversial”, according to Thierry Magnin, physicist and priest, author of a column in The cross. The book arouses curiosity among his flock, which he “understands”. “But if we have the right to think that there is a great watchmaker, we do not have the right to say that it is ‘proof'”, he told AFP.
He sees in it “the trap of concordism”, this thought wanting to link the sacred texts to science. “To articulate science and religion is not to confuse”.
“To claim to scientifically prove the existence of God is to show a certain naivety,” said the philosopher of science Etienne Klein, in an interview with The Express.
According to François Euvé, director of the Jesuit magazine Studies, if the book works so well, it is because it responds to a “quest for reference, in a period of uncertainty about the future of the world which would not only be chaos, but would be regulated by a superior intelligence” .
But for this theologian and physicist, science “is not intended to respond” to this quest. “You can be scientific and in love without having to prove that the loved one is the ‘good one’!” »
Even more problematic in his eyes: the second part of the book, the “non-science” evidence based on the Bible, the “non-standard destiny” of the Jewish people and the miracle of Fatima to invalidate the non-existence of God. According to The Express, the American Nobel Prize in physics, Robert Wilson, would not have signed the preface of the book if he had read this part.
“I have no written evidence of his regrets,” replies Mr. Bolloré.