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Calculating God

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 3,170 ratings · 321 reviews

An alien shuttle craft lands outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Out pops a six-legged, two-armed alien, 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 tim...more

Mass Market Paperback, 338 pages

Published July 15th 2001 by Tor Science Fiction (first published June 2000)

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Jun 14, 2007 amireal rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: g-scifi, reviewed

Wow.

No. Seriously. Wow.

This guy? Deep.

Sawyer challenges a lot of assumptions in this book. About god, about evolution, about astronomy and about paleontologists.

"Take me to your paleontologist." Once again, Sawyer does aliens in a way that makes them alien in such perfect ways.

This book goes to the edges of philosophy and beyond and it was a very interesting and challenging ride to be on. Wow.

It does at times read like a textbook to varying subjects, there's an awful lot of science and philosop...more

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May 04, 2011 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: award-nominee-campbell, award-nominee-hugo, multiple-award-nominee, audiobook, religion-spirituality, science-fiction, 2000-2005, signed-first-or-limited-edition

4.5 stars. Most of this book is a solid 5 star effort that I thought was incredibly well done. The central plot involves a representative from a highly advanced alien culture arriving on Earth to review our fossil records and demonstrating to an atheist anthropologist actual proof of the existence of God. It is a well written, deftly plotted and extremely clever spin on the "intelligent design" theory and was a lot of fun to read.

The story loses one star (or at least a half star) for a very clu...more

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Jan 05, 2009 Zinta rated it 5 of 5 stars

Usually, if I sense an alien coming, I run. In movies or books, anyway. Beasties with six legs and eyes on wands, flying saucers and such... not my thing. But good writing, in any genre, is always my thing. There is so much to learn and understand in solid reality that I wish no escapism, the latter wasting precious real time for matters of value and substance ... but when science fiction keeps enough of its six legs firmly planted in issues we face in substantiated reality, even as it waves its...more Usually, if I sense an alien coming, I run. In movies or books, anyway. Beasties with six legs and eyes on wands, flying saucers and such... not my thing. But good writing, in any genre, is always my thing. There is so much to learn and understand in solid reality that I wish no escapism, the latter wasting precious real time for matters of value and substance ... but when science fiction keeps enough of its six legs firmly planted in issues we face in substantiated reality, even as it waves its eye wands into the unknown ... then my interest is won.

Robert J. Sawyer is a familiar name to me, even without being a sci fi fan. The title, "Calculating God," locked into my lifelong fascination with the spiritual realm. I was intrigued to know how a sci fi writer of acclaim would approach the concept of God, that is, faith, grounded in a world of science, however speculative: he does it well and convincingly.

Hollus, aforementioned six-legged alien with waving eye wands, comes to Earth to research, well, life itself. And all that the concept of life and living encompasses. She enters a museum to find a paleontologist, thus meeting Tom Jericho, scientist who is facing the afterlife, like it or not, as a newly diagnosed cancer patient. The two have an ongoing dialogue about God and faith, which pretty much sums up the entire premise of this story, with few sidelines. Surprise! For it is the alien who believes in God, the human being who so mightily resists, even as he contemplates his fast approaching mortality.

I could complain that various scenes and plot twists in this book leave me unconvinced. I have a hard time buying the idea that people would accept so quickly and easily, almost to the point of being oblivious, an alien moving so casually among them, even if mostly in hologram form. The vandalism in the museum by religious fundamentalists is on shaky ground, potentially unnecessary, but with more solid plotting, might have been developed into a fascinating tangent of exploring religious fervor when it goes too far. Sawyer missed his mark here for what might have added a fine nuance to the story.

Yet, regardless, I found myself recommending this book to others even before I had finished it. Several times, the author brings out points in this dialogue on faith that made me "a-ha!" aloud in my reading, wondering, why had I never thought of that? He makes arguments, via Hollus, favoring the idea of intelligent design, that for all the proven evolution of one species over time in a myriad of ways and forms, never has science shown one species evolving into another species. A dog can, over time, become a great many other breeds of dog, but he will never become a bird. And this, after all, is the premise on which the idea of evolution is, must be, built. Cell becomes fish becomes reptile becomes primate becomes man... you know the lineage. Science has gaps in this area, requiring faith.

What Sawyer so masterfully brings to light in this story is that it is science that requires many leaps of faith ... *not* believing in God. Perhaps, in fact, much more so. With his alien voice, in various examinations of one scientific premise after another, he argues that God is rooted in science, that is, well substantiated in many forms of solid evidence, while the [godless] science we accept in the contemporary world is actually standing on the clay feet of irrational faith.

Fascinating.

The literary value of this book, in terms of style and form, for me, is on the weak side. Its value as invitation for lively discussion, its courageous groundbreaking of the usual storylines of more typical sci fi fare, deserves high praise. Science fiction fan or not -- recommended reading.
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Apr 02, 2011 Christian rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I quite looked forward to this book due to the intriguing concept. It didnt live up to its potential. The book's premise as I understood it was an theistic alien and an athiestic palentologist debating the existence of God. The problem was that all the arguments he used for the existence of God were made up (examples being that every planet in the Galaxy has had 5 extinctions, and every race has the same DNA). The discussions become boring since they are entirely fictional in all the details and...more

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Sep 26, 2007 Deanna rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2006

If you're a fan of Science Fiction, chances are that you'll like this book. I'm not really a Sci-Fi fan, but it was recommended to me by my nephew who IS a Sci-Fi fan and loved this book. Knowing I'll read just about anything, he suggested I give it a go. It took me about 2 months to finally finish this book, reading many other books in between. I learned a few things reading this book (none of which I can remember now lol). I enjoyed the story, it's a good story...but the Sci-Fi mumbo jumbo was...more

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Nov 28, 2008 Larrirosser rated it 3 of 5 stars

I think Robert Sawyer and I have something in common...we tell stories to figure out what we really think. In The Neanderthal Parallax he tells the story of a universe without a god, and in Calculating God, he tells the story of a universe with a god. I guess I'll have to finish this book to decide which one I like better.

So far, the character of Hollus isn't as deep or well drawn as Ponter Boddit, but the premise is intriguing and the voice of palentologist Thomas David Jerchico is strong and...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Samuel Proulx rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: religious, sf, sciencefiction, science, fiction

This book made me think about a lot of things. In the field of science fiction, religion is most often something to be scorned and laughed at, mostly through[return]heavy handed pokes at the Catholic church. While I'd agree that Christianity has a set of major problems, I think most readers and writers of science fiction[return]are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. That's what makes _Calculating God_ so interesting: it takes a new and fresh look at creationism. Oh, basic[return]religious...more

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Jan 24, 2011 Brandon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, religion

I enjoyed reading this book. I always had the urge to read one more chapter before putting it down. Sawyer presents a very intriguing outlook on the different potential roles for a god in our universe and does so with his usual mix of story telling and science.[return][return]My number one complaint about this book is the amount of name dropping. People do not say things such as "I saw an interview on CTV". I get that this book takes place in Canada, but the number of times a Toronto landmark wo...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Leiah rated it 1 of 5 stars

I tried to finish the book, I really did. However, there really wasn't any 'there' there. It reads as nothing other than the ramblings of a man who learned sound bites about science so that he could convince thoughtful persons to purchase a book that he then uses as a soapbox for obsessive ravings.

I expected to find sound science to be the basis of the book, with some interesting theories on the possibilities of intelligent design. Some comparative paleontology, interesting theories on the devel...more I tried to finish the book, I really did. However, there really wasn't any 'there' there. It reads as nothing other than the ramblings of a man who learned sound bites about science so that he could convince thoughtful persons to purchase a book that he then uses as a soapbox for obsessive ravings.

I expected to find sound science to be the basis of the book, with some interesting theories on the possibilities of intelligent design. Some comparative paleontology, interesting theories on the development of life on other planets would have been quite welcome. Mostly I was looking for thoughtful reasoning of a scientific theory that included the possibility of an outside developmental force. What I found was the shouting of a man who apparently is so unsure of his own beliefs he has to scream loudly enough to drown out his own questions.

I am not opposed to the concept of intelligent design. The cosmos is, indeed, a wondrous thing. More wondrous, I believe, than even the most highly educated and thoughtful of us are psychologically capable of fully comprehending. The majority of human beings are, as a group, incapable of grasping the concept of a universe in which we are not the centre of attention. It was not all that long ago that humans were imprisoning or murdering anyone who had the audacity to suggest that the Earth wasn't the centre of the universe. The concept that there might actually be other planets that held intelligent life would have required burning at the stake or ripping apart by horses. Not only the person in question, but all their friends and family in all likelihood. The briefest study of the evening news would seem to indicate that there are numerous folk who still believe this way. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, in my estimation, as long as they don't cause harm to others in the dispensation of those beliefs.

From the evidence of all too recent holy wars, the majority of the population still believe that a cosmos consisting of, as Carl Sagan would say, `billions and billions of stars', stars which could contain hundreds of thousands or more of planets capable of supporting life, still revolves around this beautiful little blue speck on a distant arm of a more distant, insignificant galaxy in the hinterlands of the universe.

The author had an opportunity in this book to write something thought provoking, solid, and forward looking. It is a shame that he fell so far short of the goal we thought he was reaching for, and fell into a morass of pseudo psychobabble wearing a mask meant to mimic scientific thought.(less)

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Aug 01, 2012 Broodingferret rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Calculating God suffers from that all-to-common literary weakness of "good concept, poor implementation". Essentially, the book plays with the concept of Intelligent Design; specifically, a Unified Theory of Physics winds up implying that our Universe had to have been built by an intelligent entity and the main character, who is both an atheist and is dealing with a terminal illness, has to deal with the implications. While the book doesn't take an explicitly religious road-while referred to as...more

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May 13, 2012 Esmeralda rated it 3 of 5 stars

An alien lands in Toronto with hopes of studying the ROM’s fossil collection; meanwhile she provides “scientific evidence” for the existence of God. This book had a good idea with poor execution. Sawyer completely ignored the “show-don’t-tell” rule of novel-writing. The book is a clod of sci-religious dialog decorated with a thin veneer of plot. The scientific evidence consisted of debates about: 1)What are the odds? and 2) Where did altruistic behavior come from? Neither argument is fresh, but...more

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Mar 02, 2012 Nathan Forget added it

I kind of hated this book.

The premise is that an alien comes to earth and asks to meet with a paleontologist. The alien is devoutly religious, and the book is mostly a dialog between the two, with the religious alien trying to convince the atheist scientist of the existence of a god (or intelligent designer).

That wouldn't be so bad, necessarily, if it was an interesting argument that relied on facts on both sides, but because it's a work of fiction the author tips the balance in favor of the i...more

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Jan 06, 2012 Si rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book I've read by Robert Sawyer, the first being Factoring Humanity.

Calculating God was almost an aborted read. Sawyer sets a nice tone initially, but then I barely made it through a constant stream of pop culture references and then a brief diatribe on creationists vs. evolutionists and how the former are basically unintelligent people and the latter have it all figured out, though any good scientist will tell you, "No, we haven't figured it all out. We have lots of ideas and...more

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Nov 13, 2011 Tim rated it 5 of 5 stars

A really enjoyable read. I was uncertain at first, the premise of an alien dropping down to earth especially to visit the Royal Ontario Museum seemed a little stretched, but Sawyer carried it off with aplomb. He holds a tight line between serious science and entertaining reading, covering some hard moral quandaries, without ever entering into the realm of the saccharine sweet.

It's quite a grounded tale. It delves deeply into family tragedy, risking melodrama but sidestepping it easily. It isn't...more

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Oct 14, 2011 Bruce rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-fantasy, spirituality

Two and a half stars. 2 = I read it and wished I hadn't, 3=fine if you've got nothing better to do. So yeah, I feel mildly like I wasted my time.

Sawyer as an author takes the big idea and then sets up his characters to be affected by it. In this case the idea is really big: god.

Frankly, I find the whole god/not god argument rather tedious. It's mostly about just pushing people's buttons on one side or the other, and shooting stereotyped fish in a barrel with the obligatory stupid southern fundam...more

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Oct 10, 2011 Andreas rated it 3 of 5 stars

An alien lands outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Ontario and asks to see a paleontologist. This is the first alien contact. The alien says that on his world, and on the world of another alien race, the fossil record shows that five mass extinctions have occurred at the same time as they did on earth. The alien races see this as evidence that God exists, and is tampering with the development of intelligent beings. The human paleontologist, Tom Jericho, is skeptical at first, but the evidence is...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Christine Ricci rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think this is a great book for discussion. For instance, I appreciated that Sawyer gave himself a set of rules for creating life throughout the universe using the rules we know now with only a few additions. While, on one hand, I did not feel that Sawyer was stretching his creativity by imagining what could be possible with infinite possibilities and different rules; on the other hand, I feel Sawyer is using the rules to wring all the possibility out of life.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I did...more

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Dec 23, 2010 Sarah (Workaday Reads) rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2010, canadian, did-not-finish

I decided to venture into reading a few other books written by Robert J Sawyer, based on the recent trilogy I read. I picked up Calculating God, which is based on the idea that aliens arrive on Earth, bringing with them a firm belief in a universe creator.

I haven't finished the book yet, but I am definitely not enjoying it so far. I am about three quarters of the way through, but I have to finish, I can't bring myself to just stop. The idea of the book sounded interesting, but it is falling flat...more

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Aug 14, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 31, 2010 Sujal rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the second Sawyer book I've read, after picking up Flash Forward because of the TV show. I found both books to be more about deep philosophical questions over action or drama or whatever. Flash Forward tackled some interesting questions about fate and choice. Calculating God takes on the proposition of a intelligent design that's compatible with science.

The thing with Sawyer's books is that they aren't page turners because of drama or suspense or action. Instead, I keep coming back becau...more This is the second Sawyer book I've read, after picking up Flash Forward because of the TV show. I found both books to be more about deep philosophical questions over action or drama or whatever. Flash Forward tackled some interesting questions about fate and choice. Calculating God takes on the proposition of a intelligent design that's compatible with science.

The thing with Sawyer's books is that they aren't page turners because of drama or suspense or action. Instead, I keep coming back because I know that each chapter will provide another opportunity for an interesting conversation or deep thought about whatever idea Sawyer is exploring.

In this particular book, the main character is an atheist paleontologist who is dying of cancer. An alien comes to visit earth on a research mission. The alien is a fellow scientist who believes in evolution and the scientific method, but he's also a firm believer in God. Not only does he believe in God, but he does so because science and research have led him to conclude that there must be a God. The two spend most of the book discussing the nature of God, different interpretations, and how an atheist can come to grips with the idea that God must exist.

It's a surprisingly thought provoking read. Like Flash Forward, it led to some great conversations with folks who haven't even read the book.

Sawyer does have a tendency to throw in some action bits to create a climax. At least, he did so in both this book and Flash Forward. The action sort of comes out of nowhere and simply provides a catalyst for the story to enter the home stretch. It's not bad, just always an unusual segue.

The other minor gripe is that he does try to finish the story and answer the main deep question. In this case, we do get to find out the nature of God in this story's universe. Not sure if he needed to finish it that way, but it does wrap the story up into a nice bow (and also did provide another interesting thing to think about after the story was done).

I really enjoyed the book, and totally recommend it. Neither of the last two items really detract from the book at all.(less)

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Apr 27, 2010 Matt rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: robert-j-sawyer

Not what I expected out a science fiction book. I gathered from the title that there would be some philosophical debate over the existence of a God and that isn't what turned me off from this book. Maybe having read newer Sawyer works before this earlier release was my mistake, but this novel seemed to lack something that I have come to expect from Sawyer. He depicts Canada well enough and that is something that I enjoy, being a Canadian myself I get a kick out of some of his Canadian stereotype...more

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Apr 13, 2010 Debs rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, science-fiction, gifted

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 27, 2011 Graham Crawford rated it 1 of 5 stars

Before reading this book, Robert Sawyer had been a borderline author for me. His SciFis are generally well researched, but his characters are too Middle-class-married-WASP-with-children for my taste. They obsess over themselves and their trite conceptions of "morality"- a theme Sawyer cannot leave alone, or do justice to. In "Calculating GOD", Sawyer finally shows his hand. And for me, he's no longer a borderline author - he's a card carrying foot soldier of the Christian Creationist far right....more

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Dec 26, 2012 David rated it 1 of 5 stars

Great premise, terrible execution.

Calculating God proposes the question "what if we make contact with aliens and discover that they are not rationalist-atheist scientists, but true believers?" It's a provocative opening and challenge to science fiction in general, which is often though not always written by rationalist, atheist authors who assume their readers and their imagined futures will share those values.

The problem is that Calculating God isn't a very good book on any level. The majority...more Great premise, terrible execution.

Calculating God proposes the question "what if we make contact with aliens and discover that they are not rationalist-atheist scientists, but true believers?" It's a provocative opening and challenge to science fiction in general, which is often though not always written by rationalist, atheist authors who assume their readers and their imagined futures will share those values.

The problem is that Calculating God isn't a very good book on any level. The majority of its pages take the form of a dialogue between Hollus, an alien Forhilnor, and Thomas Jericho, an aging, cancer-stricken paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum. The aliens have come to Earth to conduct research, having determined that mass extinctions have occurred at the same points in the histories of three different inhabited worlds. Hence, they wish to speak with a paleontologist and not with the United Nations.

Sawyer's dialogue follows more the pattern of Galileo than that of Plato. It's a dialogue between straw men in which the hand of the creator (ironic, that) is never absent. There is no depth to the theology he places in his characters' mouths, which varies between absent-God Deism and a strange sort of scientist-theology of a God who intervenes only at cosmic scales. His science is equally poor: the aliens' proof of the existence of God is based on the anthropic principle, the well-known claim that the universe's structure and parameters have been "fine-tuned" to allow the existence of life. The anthropic principle is hardly new ground. Sawyer's aliens turn it into a "proof" of the existence of God via their discovery (but not explication!) of a Grand Unified Theory which conveniently shows that the "multiverse" answer to the principle — that ours is one of a multitude of universes with different physical constants — isn't true. The other major response, that the apparent fine-tuning is the result of an underlying order yet to be discovered, is mentioned but glossed over. Since the only remaining explanation is that (a) God intervened, say the aliens, clearly God exists.

Unfortunately for Sawyer and his aliens, that isn't how scientific proofs work. (It's also not how Occam's Razor, which the author repeatedly has characters invoke incorrectly, works). Proof by elimination must be coupled with a proof of the extent of the field — i.e., demonstration that an enumerated set of possible solutions is exhaustive — and with rigorous definitions. The ridiculous "proof" presented in Calculating God manages to insult science and religion. (This kind of deeply flawed reasoning is present throughout the book. Found an abandoned planet? Clearly, the vanished civilization uploaded themselves into a computer, says our protagonist. "Oh. Clearly. Why didn't I think of that eminently and indisputably a-priori correct explanation?" says the alien, and proceeds).

So the majority of the book is consumed in this very silly discussion, together with personal reflection and reminiscence from the dying protagonist. Then — surprise! — a couple of even sillier things happen. First, there's a ludicrous subplot featuring fundamentalist American terrorists destroying "lying" fossils, at the Royal Ontario Museum of all places. It's almost farcical, except that the author seems to be taking it seriously. Secondly...(view spoiler)

Seriously, don't read this book. Read A Canticle for Leibowitz if you're in the mood for religious science fiction. This is tripe.(less)

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Mar 11, 2011 MB Taylor rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I finished reading Calculating God this morning on the bus on the bus to work this morning. This is an amazing book; SF like I haven’t read for years. It’s a book about an idea.

The two main characters, Thomas Jericho, a human paleontologist with the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto & Hollus deten stak Jaton, a Forhilnor paleontologist in search of life on other planets in the galaxy, spend most of the book talking.

The subject: Was the universe created by an Intelligent Designer or was it crea...more I finished reading Calculating God this morning on the bus on the bus to work this morning. This is an amazing book; SF like I haven’t read for years. It’s a book about an idea.

The two main characters, Thomas Jericho, a human paleontologist with the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto & Hollus deten stak Jaton, a Forhilnor paleontologist in search of life on other planets in the galaxy, spend most of the book talking.

The subject: Was the universe created by an Intelligent Designer or was it created by random chance. Hollus says the evidence for an intelligent designer is incontrovertible. Thomas says the evidence is circumstantial and everything can be explained by random chance.

Since this is science fiction, one might expect this to be a “look at how stupid the intelligent design proponents are” but it’s not. The arguments Sawyer has Hollus present seem pretty well laid out. I don’t know enough about physics to know how accurate the science is, but it seems pretty realistic. And the evolution stuff (which I know a little more about) doesn’t contradict anything I know.

Their conversations cover topics such as the nature of God and more general discussions about morality and ethics.

Hollus’s species is pretty similar to ours, at least in terms of how we think. So in the interest of interstellar diversity, Sawyer tosses in another species, the Wreed, who think very differently. The discussions of the differences, their causes and consequences are as fascinating as the rest.

My only complaint with Calculating God is the last 70 odd pages of the book. The first three fourths of the book were fantastic, but the last quarter is only very good. Maybe Sawyer thought a whole novel of talking heads wouldn’t be interesting enough so he added some excitement. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t dislike the last part; I just liked the first part better.

If you like your SF to be space opera with thrill a minute adventures on alien planets or maybe steampunk brass mechanical men with clockwork innards, you might want to pass on Calculating God. But, if you like to think especially about things contrary to your personal belief systems (at least contrary to mine), you might like this. I’m no Intelligent Design believer, but this book made me think about the question in a different light.
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Dec 06, 2008 Noah M. rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book.

What if aliens came to Earth and said, "Hey, did you know there's a God? Oh, we also have scientific evidence of it."

That would be sort of troubling.

And so it was.

You should read this book if you like books about aliens believing in God.

The "god" that Sawyer's book presents is very different from the god of any religion we've managed to develop on this planet. This book is about a scientific explanation for an intelligent designer.

The characters were amazing. Really well drawn....more

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Jun 15, 2011 Mark Schlatter rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: interlibrary-loan

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Note: I'm a Lutheran and a pretty firm believer that creationism and/or intelligent design is not science. Since the major theme of Calculating God is the scientific search for God, starting with some of the same arguments I have seen in intelligent design, my bias is probably important to my take on the book.

Sawyer is writing about what would happen if an alien came to Earth looking for additional evidence (a la intelligent design) that God exists. It's a great premise, but I did not like the e...more

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Apr 08, 2010 Amandala rated it 5 of 5 stars

I do not usually read science fiction but this book came highly recommended. Once I gave it a shot, it quickly became a page-turner. Hollus, an alien life-form, lands a ship in front of ROM, a historical museum in Canada and asks to be taken to a paleontologist. Once he finds him (the main character of the book, Tom Jericho) they eventually get to the point of comparing fossils, and evolutionary and extinction patterns between their worlds, and the similarities are shocking. The mission Hollus i...more

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May 03, 2012 Kevin Milligan rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: set-aside, sci-fi

I grabbed this off of the shelf at the bookstore with a sense of joy. I love the religious debate when it is done properly so a sci-fi book carrying this debate throughout sounded awesome, right up my alley. Well immediately I was disappointed. First problem was the horrible character that RJS chose to make as his atheist. He was flat and pathetic. Maybe it is just me but you cannot have one character spend the first hundred pages forcing the other to just stutter. I expected a debate not the no...more I grabbed this off of the shelf at the bookstore with a sense of joy. I love the religious debate when it is done properly so a sci-fi book carrying this debate throughout sounded awesome, right up my alley. Well immediately I was disappointed. First problem was the horrible character that RJS chose to make as his atheist. He was flat and pathetic. Maybe it is just me but you cannot have one character spend the first hundred pages forcing the other to just stutter. I expected a debate not the nonsense reaming that I received.
Allow me to suggest something, if you want to throw intelligent design arguments at me don't do it in the laughable manner that this book did. Before the debate began I was hit with the worst concept that I have ever heard of. The idea of a universe out of chaos depends completely on the randomness that is present. You cannot have three planets in three solar systems experience the same five extinction events at the same time. I was lucky to get past this part of the book but it was hard. If this was to be true then the conclusion would of course be a God. I strongly feel that this is a weak attempt by the author to end the debate before it even starts.
It gets worse! The tuned in dials that creationists argue as indirect proof of a God fails when or if there are multiple universes. Well this alien has proved that to be incorrect because of a magical fifth force that is as foolish of an idea as the extinction event concept was. I'd like to see the math to this one, oh wait it's complex. Throw my head against a wall at that one. Fly Hawkins and Kaku over, I'm sure that they could figure out the math. Sorry, it wasn't worth writing into the plot for instead of logic RJS just wanted to launch himself into another rant about the genius design of our beings.
I was lucky to get as far into this book as I did. I could have argued with that alien to a far further level than the idiotic character did and in the end that was the reason that I did not finish this book. I picked it up expecting a debate and got nothing but some religious bullshit!(less)

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Sep 06, 2011 Eric Bauman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011

I must have enjoyed this book, since I finished it in just over three days.

A spaceship lands in front of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. An alien emerges and walks into the museum, wanting to meet with a paleontologist. This alien (and others not only of her race but of another) have been travelling around the Universe trying to scientifically prove that God exists. The paleontologist that she meets up with, Tom Jericho, is dying of lung cancer and is an atheist. The two have a good, health...more I must have enjoyed this book, since I finished it in just over three days.

A spaceship lands in front of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. An alien emerges and walks into the museum, wanting to meet with a paleontologist. This alien (and others not only of her race but of another) have been travelling around the Universe trying to scientifically prove that God exists. The paleontologist that she meets up with, Tom Jericho, is dying of lung cancer and is an atheist. The two have a good, healthy exchange of ideas but then are forced to confront the ugly side of religion on this planet when two Christian fundamentalists try to destroy an exhibit of fossils and to convince the alien that Jericho is lying to it, that God exists and created the world 6,000 years ago, etc. etc. etc.

There are two reasons why I bought this book. First was because I like Mr. Sawyer’s writing (although I have only read one other book of his, “WWW: Wake”) and the title and description intrigued me. The second was to try to piss off the reactionary, holier-than-thou Bible thumpers here in South Carolina (guess the second mission failed because I read it so fast). Don’t get me wrong: Christians are cool (to me) as long as they keep their beliefs to themselves. Unfortunately, around here, that doesn’t happen: it is assumed that all people are Christian and if you’re not, you’d better keep quiet. I am an agnostic—I think the existence of a god is most unlikely, but since I can’t prove it, I can’t discount the possibility.

The book really does not take a side one way or the other. Jericho does have a conversion of sorts at the end of the book (due to an event that I won’t tell you about—read the book), but the author doesn’t say that yes, God does exist; it is left up to the reader to decide for themselves. It is a book that will make you think, believer or not. And it does stay with you (I finished it this morning and I’m still thinking about it). Will it make you change your beliefs? It might, but probably not, but it will entertain and challenge you. Highly recommended.
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About Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's best known and most successful science fiction writers. He is the only Canadian (and one of only 7 writers in the world) to have won all three of the top international awards for science fiction: the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, the 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Mindscan.
Robert Sawyer grew up in...more Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's best known and most successful science fiction writers. He is the only Canadian (and one of only 7 writers in the world) to have won all three of the top international awards for science fiction: the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, the 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Mindscan.
Robert Sawyer grew up in Toronto, the son of two university professors. He credits two of his favourite shows from the late 1960s and early 1970s, Search and Star Trek, with teaching him some of the fundamentals of the science-fiction craft. Sawyer was obsessed with outer space from a young age, and he vividly remembers watching the televised Apollo missions. He claims to have watched the 1968 classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey 25 times. He began writing science fiction in a high school club, which he co-founded, NASFA (Northview Academy Association of Science Fiction Addicts). Sawyer graduated in 1982 from the Radio and Television Arts Program at Ryerson University, where he later worked as an instructor.

Sawyer's first published book, Golden Fleece (1989), is an adaptation of short stories that had previously appeared in the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This book won the Aurora Award for the best Canadian science-fiction novel in English. In the early 1990s Sawyer went on to publish his inventive Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, about a world of intelligent dinosaurs. His 1995 award winning The Terminal Experiment confirmed his place as a major international science-fiction writer.

A prolific writer, Sawyer has published more than 10 novels, plus two trilogies. Reviewers praise Sawyer for his concise prose, which has been compared to that of the science-fiction master Isaac Asimov. Like many science fiction-writers, Sawyer welcomes the opportunities his chosen genre provides for exploring ideas. The first book of his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, Hominids (2002), is set in a near-future society, in which a quantum computing experiment brings a Neanderthal scientist from a parallel Earth to ours. His 2006 Mindscan explores the possibility of transferring human consciousness into a mechanical body, and the ensuing ethical, legal, and societal ramifications.

A passionate advocate for science fiction, Sawyer teaches creative writing and appears frequently in the media to discuss his genre. He prefers the label "philosophical fiction," and in no way sees himself as a predictor of the future. His mission statement for his writing is "To combine the intimately human with the grandly cosmic."

http://us.macmillan.com/author/robert...(less)

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“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.” — 2,174 people liked it

“There is no indisputable proof for the big bang," said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?” — 19 people liked it

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