As part of its cycle of conferences and with a full house at the Mutua Madrileña Auditorium, NEOS held yesterday a presentation and debate on the scientific evidence of the existence of God with the authors of the book “God. The science. Tests. The dawn of a revolution» Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, together with prominent journalists and intellectuals.
María San Gil, vice president of NEOS, opened the event with a heartfelt memory of the politician and colleague, Eugenio Nasarre, who recently passed away. San Gil stressed the importance of this presentation: «NEOS has always stated that the cause among the causes of the crisis we are experiencing is the lack of faith, of transcendence… We have been living for years as if God did not exist and, those of us who believe in God, we had accepted and assumed that God had to restrict himself to the family environment. “This book puts God back at the center of the debate.”
A necessary origin
Moderated by the audiovisual journalist responsible for NEOS, writer and professor at the Francisco de Vitoria University, Isidro Catela, the authors responded to a key question: Is whether God exists or not really important, and what consequences do this certainty have on life? For Bolloré, “if God does not exist, the universe cannot have a beginning, because nothing can come out of nothing, as the philosopher Parmenides already said.” Bonnassies, for his part, explained: «The consequences in life are fundamental. If God does not exist, nothing will be left of us in a hundred thousand years. But, if God exists, a being beyond time, matter and space, a being with whom we can always interact, this gives the things we experience on earth an incalculable value. It is a world where there is good and evil, there is a higher value.
The “fine-tuning” of the universe
Bonnassies assured that “There is clearly a principle of time, space and matter, which are linked, as Einstein has demonstrated. This means that the cause of the emergence of all this cannot be material, spatial, or temporal. He has had the power, the strength, to create everything that exists. And he has also adjusted everything so that the atoms could be stable and allow things to happen later, such as the stars being able to shine for hundreds of millions of years, which seemed unlikely, and complex life developing.
Bolloré, for his part, explained how evolution is not incompatible with belief in God: «In fact, it is clear that, at a given moment, science was a shock to the preconceived ideas of Western man. In the Renaissance, we had the idea that God had created Adam and Eve from nothing. Today, when we think about it, we see that God has taken a long time to create the solar system, life… He has taken his time. He has chosen this system of evolution, but this fits perfectly with our idea of God.
Tests, evidence and faith
At the second table, Bonnassies had the option to share a talk with Mr. Santiago Martin, priest, journalist and writer, who reflected on faith and science. «The problem is when little knowledge separates you from God because it fills you with pride. This has been the drift of science in recent centuries,” said the religious, also a graduate in Biology. God’s co-author. The science. Tests. The Dawn of a Revolution clarified the concept of evidence, evidence and the role of faith: “Our book does not talk about faith: the amount of evidence that converges leads to certainty about the existence of God.”
Journalism and belief
Finally, Bolloré spoke with journalists Irene Pozo, director of socio-religious content at Grupo Ábside (COPE and Trece TV), Bieito Rubido, director of El Debate, and José Francisco Serrano Oceja, professor of Journalism at the San Pablo CEU University and journalist at ABC, at a table where they talked about journalism and belief, and about the social and media impact of the book’s ideas. “The journalistic profession in Spain is nourished by people who have a vision from the left, from the agnostic world and the most absolute relativism,” reflected Rubido, who recalled: “For a time, in Europe in general, in Spain in particular, Catholics were ashamed. There is a fact: in Spain, on Sundays more people go to mass than to football. 70% of the Spanish population is Catholic. The State can be non-denominational or secular, but society cannot. We citizens have no reason not to believe in God. And neither do journalists.
For Serrano Oceja, “journalists cannot start from suspicion in the face of reality.” He talked about philosophy and journalism. The natural attitude of a journalist is not suspicion, but surprise about reality. We can apply this to the question about God. And he assured: “We cannot live with dignity, face realities like death, without asking ourselves about the origin or the end.” Irene Pozo, for her part, defended a “very human communication, from people to people,” and assured that “this book should be in the media, in the great debates.”
The boycott of some media
Speaking about media, journalism and book controversy, Bolloré concluded the interest of the topic of his book, the scientific evidence of the existence of God, since despite the boycott carried out by the media in France, they have sold more than 250,000 books: «Many people feel great anxiety. People are thirsty for knowledge, they want us to talk to them about this issue. This book comes at the right time.
About NEOS
NEOS is a cultural alternative that arises from the need to confront the social and political current that prevails today and whose objective is to destroy and replace the social order based on Christian foundations, the seed of Western civilization. The platform carries out its work through seven work groups that respond to each of its pillars: Life, Truth, Dignity of the Person and Family, Freedom, Spain Nation and Global Threats.
