In recent centuries, religion and scientific knowledge have often clashed. Indeed, there is no point in denying it, many scientific discoveries have profoundly undermined religious traditions. It is a phenomenon that we know well in the West where secularism, secularism, materialism and even atheism have progressively spread in society, often finding their roots in those scientific discoveries that have effectively dismantled absolute (and blind) faith in the Holy Scriptures.
The result has been a progressive distancing between faith and science, between religion and reason. Ideological alignments were formed whereby the proponents of scientific knowledge often saw (and see) in every new discovery the proven proof of the absence of any divine and transcendent aspect in human existence. In response, religion has sometimes taken intransigent positions, denying value to what science has demonstrated.
Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies in their powerful (612 pages) “God. Science. The proofs” (Sonda, 2024, Euro 24.90. Also Ebook) reopen the match between faith and science by focusing on a surprising approach, because it is rigorously scientific and rational. In fact, they retrace the great scientific discoveries of the last one hundred and fifty years - from the Big Bang as an explanation of the origin of the universe to Einstein's theory of relativity, passing through the discovery of DNA and the tracing of the human genome - to show us how nothing both definitive and defined, both in the scientific and religious fields. For example, there is still no proven evidence that there was not a creative principle that initiated and “designed” everything. Indeed... only 100 years ago all scientists thought that the Universe was eternal and stable, while today we know that it had a beginning, will have an end, is expanding and comes from a Big Bang. This point raises, for the authors, the question of a creator God. The discovery of the fine regulation of the Universe, which makes the existence of atoms, stars and complex life possible, is a second key point that also raises the question of its origin.
All studies on the origin of life say that it was born billions of years ago and that it developed from inert matter, except that no one has managed to explain how this extraordinary process could have begun. In a language accessible to all, the authors therefore offer a fascinating overview of the scientific evidence for the existence of God. Converging rational evidence is thus brought to light, in independent fields, which sheds new light on key questions concerning our origins. and those of the universe in which we live. Is there a definitive answer? The authors suggest it, of course. They don't hold back after throwing the stone into the pond and this is what we expect from a sincere, frank, rigorous book from a philosophical and scientific point of view.
As they write at the end of the presentation of the volume: «Ultimately God exists or he does not exist: the answer can only be binary. It's a yes or no. So far only our lack of knowledge has been an obstacle. However, the acquisition of a large amount of converging evidence, at the same time numerous, rational and from different and independent fields of knowledge, sheds a new and probably decisive light on the question."
<p>The cover</p>
