Book Review: The Reality of God

When I see a book about about the scientific evidence for God I have some trepidations. Especially since there are many ways this can go badly. So when I received The Reality of God: The Layman’s Guide to Scientific Evidence for the Creator by Steven R. Hemler for review I had that in the back of my mind. Since it was from Saint Benedict Press I should have known not to be concerned.

This book is rather straight forward and divided into three major categories regarding God’s existence. The cosmic, biological, and then philosophical arguments.

Generally the first part covers arguments regarding proofs of the universe having a beginning irregardless of what competing theory of the universe you go with. As part of this the Kalām cosmological argument is presented. After this are section regarding the fine tuning argument. How the universe seems to be fine tuned for life and that even minor variances in universal constants and laws would have rendered life impossible. I found the information well presented and easily understandable. While I have read several related books on these topics I still picked up some more information.

The trepidations I mentioned at the beginning of this post usually regard the handling of biology and evolution. I have gone through different phases regarding this myself. Originally held the view of evolutionary naturalism as a result of atheistic materialism. My conversion included a brief stop in creationism I picked up from Protestant radio. My mistaken belief was that if I was going to take the existence of God seriously that this went with it. After that I was more into the view as popularized by the intelligent design movement. Now my opinion is more along the line “Whatever God did is fine with me.” So the view usually called theistic evolution raises no hackles with me. This is the view this book goes into. I really liked how the subject was covered including necessary caveats. To often this topic is presented as either/or when really both/and is really called for. Regardless I am open to wherever the evidence leads.

The last part deals with what the author calls human evidences such as conscience, the light of reason, and the philosophical ways of knowing of God’s existence classically put forward by St. Thomas Aquinas. Again I found this presented well.

This is a fairly short book and so there is a lot of information to be covered and gone through. Really most of the topics covered usually require full-length book treatment. Still I think the book meets its objective as a layman’s guide. So as an introduction to these topics I consider this worthwhile and at a level for high school students on up. There are plenty of references to other books that do go in more depth. Fr. Robert J. Spitzer works are mentioned throughout. I found his book New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy to be outstanding even if it made my brain hurt. Although that book is not for the casual layman and is can be quite technical in parts. As an introduction to some of the basic arguments for the existence of God I found The Reality of God as something I would have no problem recommending.