Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer

Calculating God is the new near-future SF thriller from the popular and award-winning Robert J. Sawyer. An alien shuttle craft lands outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. A six-legged, two-armed alien emerges, who says, in perfect English, "Take me to a paleontologist." It seems that Earth, and the alien's home planet, and the home planet of another alien species traveling on the alien mother ship, all experienced the same five cataclysmic events at about the same time (one example of these "cataclysmic events" would be the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs). Both alien races believe this proves the existence of God: i.e. he's obviously been playing with the evolution of life on each of these planets. From this provocative launch point, Sawyer tells a fast-paced, and morally and intellectually challenging, SF story that just grows larger and larger in scope. The evidence of God's universal existence is not universally well received on Earth, nor even immediately believed. And it reveals nothing of God's nature. In fact. it poses more questions than it answers. When a supernova explodes out in the galaxy but close enough to wipe out life on all three home-worlds, the big question is, Will God intervene or is this the sixth cataclysm:? Calculating God is SF on the grand scale. Calculating God is a 2001 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

An advanced life form comes down to earth with scientific proof that God exists. He then asks to talk to a paleontologist to find out more about Earth's evolution. The scientist is an atheist, and have is having a hard time believing the alien, who also claims that other advanced races believe in the existence of an intelligent designer as well.

First off, its not the Christian God, and the belief in his existence has nothing to do with religion. It is presented as a fact that all the major arguments against the existence of a Creator have been throughly refuted by being more intelligent then us.

This is the science fiction leap. There is basically those that believe in God because of faith, and those that refute him because of science and/or reasoning. To believe in his existence as a scientific fact is unheard of.

The book does not present a deep philosophical discussion, but it is accurate and comprehensive enough. It goes something like “There is 4 irrefutable arguments against God's existence” and then one by one “yeah, but our advanced science proved them wrong”.

Some people might find this somewhat dismissive nature troublesome on the basis of logic, but as I said, I see this as the fiction part. What I didn't like about the book was that I hoped it would have more clever discussions, like say Asimov in some of his books. Also, the cancer angle bore no interest to me. As it stands, this book has more drama then the science fiction parts that I like. And the intellectual content is too shallow to keep me interested.

I never have read much science fiction, I mainly stuck to watching it on TV or in movies. The title of this book caught my eye and decided to give it a shot. When reading it I thought the author must have visited or worked in the Royal Ontario Museum to have such familiarity with the details. I loved the idea that our most advanced scientific thinkers could be so wrong on religion. I also really liked his take on the aliens, both being based on DNA but looking so different, especially the unique method of vision and how it impacted their thinking in the second alien species. This was a great first science fiction book and made me want to read more by this author.

Famous last words: Ge moet dat kopen, ge gaat dat goed vinden! (Onderverstaan: “gij met uw skeptisch gedoe altijd en bekijk het ook eens vanuit een andere positie” en tralala).

In theorie, op de korte korte inhoud afgaand (ik vermijd lange inhouden en reviews vóór ik boeken lees), zag het er niet oninteressant uit: wat als er aliens zouden landen op Aarde en die aliens zouden zeggen dat ze bewijzen hebben dat God bestaat?

Euh neen, dus.

Filosofie van den Aldi, wetenschap van mijn voeten, een plot zo lek als een vergiet: ik heb meer dan eens gedacht ik misschien mijn regel van “ik lees een boek ook uit als ik er aan begonnen ben” zou moeten laten varen.

Een zeer slecht boek, vond ik.

Op een paragraaf samen te vatten, ook: aliens bezoeken Aarde, atheïstische archeoloog met kanker krijgt een Reader's Digest-versie van de meest afgezaagde Behe meets Answers In Genesis-achtige nonsens, compleet met “quantum” evolutie en missing missing links en irreduceerbare complexiteit van het flagellum (zie ook). Atheïstische professor doet onwetenschappelijke veronderstelling na onwetenschappelijke veronderstelling, aliens slikken dat als koek, Betelgeuse gaat plots supernova maar “de hand van God” zorgt ervoor dat de Aarde niet vergaat. Professor verliest zijn ongeloof (of zo), en gaat met een raket mee naar “God”. Daar toegekomen, deus ex machina (heh) de chromosomen van mensen en de twee alien-rassen worden in een pot gemengd en “bevrucht” door “God”, waarna een nieuwe “God” geboren wordt en de professor sterft.

Nonsens, en ik heb meer dan een een aantal keer luidop gevloekt: het leest al een scholier die wat brochures van Intelligent Design probeert samen te vatten, en die ooit eens heeft gehoord van het antropisch principe. Slecht geschreven, slecht verhaal, slechte personages. Slecht, slecht, ongeloofwaardig en slecht.

Laten liggen. Zeer hard laten liggen.

The plot is quite thin, most of the chapters are just the protagonist musing about life and God. The last chapter is a bit abrupt, all of a sudden we mix everything together and all of a sudden the writer writes “God is a programmer”. On the science fiction front, the construction of the octopus-like aliens and numerical recognition abilities of different species are quite inspiring. The reason why many alien civilizations are now deserted are mostly based on the protagonist's hypotheses, lacking any real sense of surprise.