Book claiming to prove God sells 220,000 copies in France

«God, Science, the Evidence»: the essay shaking France

A book that promises scientific arguments for belief in God has sold 220,000 copies in France, a country that prides itself on secularism. It is written by two engineers and businessmen: Michel-Yves Bolloré, who once headed the family industrial group, and Olivier Bonnassies, a theologian and founder of the Catholic website Aleteia, who was an atheist in his youth. The volume, «God - Science - The Evidence», has accumulated two hundred conferences, televised debates, and front-page coverage, and its translation now arrives in Spain thanks to the publisher Funambulista. The launch interview was published on October 6, 2023.

The starting point is not faith, but 20th-century discoveries. Its authors argue that modern cosmology, physics, and biology no longer fit with a purely mechanistic universe. In Bolloré's words, these advances «have made the existence of a creator necessary to explain the universe». The publishing success, measured in round numbers rather than sermons, has peine a discussion that many considered closed.

What the book defends and why it sells so well

The authors themselves tone down their claims when pressed. They acknowledge that they do not offer a «definitive scientific or mathematical proof» of God's existence, but a set of «interwoven clues» for readers to form their own opinion. The word proof, they clarify, is used broadly, «as a lawyer would when presenting evidence before a court». The final decision to believe or not, they insist, rests with the reader.

The distinction matters, and the book emphasizes it: knowing that God exists is not the same as having faith in Him. One can acknowledge the existence of a creator without adhering to anything, they argue, because faith is an act of free adherence. That nuance has earned them readers outside Catholicism, including Jews, Jovenlandeses, and agnostics, according to their account.

The most frequently cited endorsement is the preface. It is signed by Robert Wilson, Nobel Prize in Physics who discovered the echo of the Big Bang and who, according to the authors, is agnostic. That a scientist of such caliber does not recoil at the book's thesis is presented as the best commercial endorsement. The Nobel endorsement serves as a seal and a shield against the harshest criticism.

The cosmological argument, from St. Thomas to the Big Bang

The intellectual framework is not new. It relies on the old cosmological argument: every effect has a cause, so the universe needs a first cause. What changes, they argue, is the packaging: Big Bang theory suggests the universe had an origin and therefore a cause; the anthropic principle insists that its constants are finely tuned to allow life; the law of causality points to a first mover. The debate also brings in irreducible complexity, the idea that certain biological systems cannot be explained by step-by-step natural processes.

On that basis, a cascade of deductions unfolds. In the debate, it is argued that if the universe was created about 13.7 billion years ago and is heading toward an end due to thermodynamics, its creator cannot be part of the created. Being immaterial, it would be timeless and therefore eternal. Time, they insist, is a quality of the created, not of the creator.

Here a sustancia ilegal opens that the book does not fully close: if God is eternal and needs no cause, why does the universe need one? The answer, repeated in a thousand variants, is that they are two different categories. The universe is contingent, it might not have existed. God, by definition, is not. Anyone who does not accept that asymmetry is left outside the argument, and that is exactly what happens in public discussion.

Who created God? The objection that never dies

The most repeated question has a name and a surname. It was Bertrand Russell who, as a teenager, tried to dynamite the cosmological argument with a simple phrase: if everything needs a creator, who created God? The classic answer is that the chain stops because God is eternal, without beginning or end, and does not need to be created. But the objection reappears at every corner of the debate, almost always with the same wrapping: if the universe can be eternal, why can't God, and vice versa?

Some turn the reasoning around and argue that the universe has simply always been there, without creator or design, and that positing a being outside time is multiplying entities without necessity. Against that, the other trench replies that dismissing the mechanical universe as insufficient and instead placing a miracle where explanation is lacking is a cheating game: a wildcard pulled out when convenient.

The discussion gets tangled in the realm of the verifiable. One camp insists that there are no properly scientific proofs, only observed facts, and that mixing clues with evidence is an abuse of language. Another responds that particle physics already borders on metaphysics and that the boundary between the material and the transcendent has become blurred. Two ways of looking at the same thing, with no possible arbiter.

The metaphysical trench: Christianity as the religion of the logos

The essay's most ambitious flank is played out on philosophical ground. In the debate, it is argued that Christianity is the only religion fully compatible with Greek reason, with the logos, and that Thomas Aquinas would be the greatest genius in the history of ideas for having fused faith and rational thought. In that reading, science not only does not contradict God: it demands Him.

Not everyone buys the package. Part of the public argues that religion historically functioned as a tool of cohesion and social control in largely illiterate societies, and that comparing religious sarracena to a mechanism to frighten the disobedient is an understatement. Another, more moderate current argues that agnosticism is an honest position and that militant atheism sins with the same arrogance it reproaches believers for.

The book itself sits in an uncomfortable middle ground. Bolloré sums up his diagnosis with a phrase that has traveled further than many pages: the two evils of the age would be «fundamentalists, who deny scientific findings, and materialists, who reject their implications». A balance that, suspiciously, leaves the book at the center of the target.

A France split 50/50 and a publishing business

The phenomenon cannot be explained without context. France appears divided almost 50% between believers and non-believers, and that fracture runs through families, cities, and companies. In many homes, talking about God was taboo, almost like talking about politics. The book has served to reopen that conversation: some give it to relatives who do not believe, not to convert them, but to debate.

Behind the noise there is an obvious business. 220,000 copies, 200 conferences, and televised front pages turn a metaphysical essay into a bestseller. It is unusual for a text on cosmology and causality to sneak onto the lists, especially in a country that prides itself on secularism. The controversy has sparked enthusiastic support and fierce criticism.

In parallel, calculations circulate about the supposed chance that would have given rise to life, statistical comparisons with winning the lottery several times in a row that are repeated in forums and debates. The full development of those accounts, with their assumptions, is what separates the catchy headline from the serious argument. Anyone who wants the detail will have to dive into it.

The authors' conclusion is modest in form and enormous in substance: science cannot rule out the existence of God. From there to proving it is a stretch that neither the book nor its critics cover entirely. Reasonable doubt remains, in one sense and the other, and a question that remains unanswered: if science cannot prove God, why is it still asked to do so?