God, the Science, the Evidence by Michel-Yves Bolloré & Olivier Bonnassies, translated from the French by Rebecca M. West and Christine Elizabeth Jones. Palomar éditions/Abrams, 562 pp.
I haven’t read a vaguely deist, intelligent-design-ish omnibus in a long time, and for good reason. As far as this kind of thing goes, God, the Science, the Evidence is an up-to-date treatment of the various angles from which science now points to an intelligence having created our universe. It’s a bit rough around the edges. The authors—an industrialist-engineer and an entrepreneur-apologist—seem to have thrown a bit of biblical criticism, some Catholic apologetics (including an odd aside about the striking material and intellectual poverty of ancient Jewish civilization that could only be alleviated by the intervention of G-d), a breezy philosophical Q&A, and an entire chapter of assorted scientist quotes into their book without a particularly strict eye for rigor or cohesion. One might argue that this is evidence of the scientific approach to philosophy, working through issues as they arise to the senses like so many empirical phenomena, rather than under the organizing structure of a top-down project. The early chapters on thermodynamics, the Big Bang, and both cosmological and biological fine-tuning seem like fine treatments with an occasional charming excess and leave the reader feeling informed. The attempts at biblical apologetics are pretty weak and should have been left out. Everything else I could take or leave, though it’s worth pointing out that in a polemical work every excess risks the authors’ credibility even on those topics on which they seem more expert.