For centuries, science and religion have often stood at odds. From Galileo’s telescope to Darwin’s theory of evolution, the story of modern discovery has been framed as a steady retreat from belief in the divine. Yet today, some scientists argue that the pendulum is swinging back; that the deeper we explore the cosmos, the more it points toward a Creator.
According to The Times, a groundbreaking new book by French authors Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies claims that “science has come full circle and forcefully put the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table.” Their 580-page work, God, the Science, the Evidence, argues that modern physics, cosmology, and genetics reveal “only one logical conclusion: an all-powerful deity created the universe and all life within it.”
A Rational Path to Faith
Both authors are men of science as well as faith. Bolloré, a computer engineer and lifelong Catholic, and Bonnassies, a former skeptic who found Christianity through reason, say their goal is not to evangelize but to engage the intellect. “This is not a book about faith or religion,” Bolloré told The Times. “Who God is … that’s a question of religion. That’s not what this book is about.”
Instead, they challenge the materialist worldview; the belief that everything, including thought and consciousness, can be explained by matter alone. Bonnassies explained that logic itself led him to reconsider atheism: “The surprise was there were many rational reasons to believe in God.”
Science and the Limits of Matter
Their thesis rests on well-established scientific observations. For instance, astronomers have long known the universe is expanding, meaning it must have had a beginning. As The Times notes, Bolloré points out that “nothing is infinite. The reasonable mind must hold that our universe has one beginning.”
If the cosmos began from a single “primeval atom,” as Belgian priest-physicist Georges Lemaître proposed in 1931, then something outside the physical universe must have initiated it. The authors argue that “the only rational explanation for a single point is for something outside the material world — a creator God.”
They also highlight the extraordinary complexity of life’s code. Bonnassies told The Times: “DNA appeared on earth 3.8 billion years ago, and it was a technological marvel.” All life, from bacteria to humans, shares this same coded language, which the authors describe as “40,000 billion times more dense than the most advanced computer today.” To attribute such a system to mere chance, they argue, defies logic.
Faith and Evidence in Harmony
Even Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Wilson, who co-discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation that supports the Big Bang theory, contributed a foreword acknowledging the coherence of their approach. “If the universe had a beginning,” Wilson wrote, “then we cannot avoid the question of creation.”
Bolloré concedes that “you cannot prove” God’s existence scientifically. Yet he observes that both faith and science require trust in unseen realities: “We are all believers … Believers in God believe, with some evidence — and believers in materialism, they believe in plenty of things which are a little bit weird.”
Interestingly, the book’s fiercest critics have not been scientists but priests. As The Times reported, “Some theologians say we don’t want evidence of God because it would reduce the merit of faith.” But Bolloré insists the goal is not to remove faith, but to show that faith and reason are not enemies.
A Question for Every Soul
Bolloré and Bonnassies have since brought their arguments to major universities, from Princeton to Berkeley, with plans for debates at Oxford and Cambridge. Their aim, as The Times quotes, is simple: to invite everyone to ask, “Are we just the result of chance and necessity? Or are we more than that?”
For Catholics, this renewed conversation between science and faith is not a surprise; it is a return to our roots. The Church has always taught that creation itself reveals the Creator. As Pope Leo XIV recently reminded the faithful, “God will ask us if we have cared for our common home,” implying not only stewardship of the world but contemplation of its origins.
Perhaps the new “great reversal” is not a victory of religion over science, but their reunion. As Bolloré’s generation of thinkers reminds us, the search for truth — whether through prayer or particle physics — inevitably leads us back to the same question: if the universe truly had a beginning, who lit the first spark?
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