Book review: Announcing the Scientific Discovery of God

Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2014 in Book Reviews | 1 comment

by Eric Demaree

★★★

Can God’s existence be proven by logic? Demaree takes a shot at it, by providing a reasonable argument for the existence of a being who dispensed to us a moral law. Demaree calls this being “God” and assumes him to be our creator. He then takes a leap of logic:

“It is highly probable that the Biblical God is the God who wrote objective morality into our mind. Objective moral principles and the Biblical commandments written into our mind are similar, if not identical.”

From this foundation–that we have proven God exists, and is the God of the Bible–Demaree begins his discussion. But this argument is not convincing to anyone who is not already persuaded. For example, the issue of gay rights easily defeats his argument. Got no religion to taint your opinion? Then you typically have no moral problem with gays. Thus, any universal morality that exists today accepts gay relationships. Yet the “Biblical God,” in Leviticus, holds a different moral standard:  “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death.” I bring up this example not because Demaree shares any opinion about gay rights in his book (he doesn’t)  but because this simple example disproves Demaree’s argument that objective moral principles agree with Biblical commandments. If there is a moral law inside us, it contradicts the Bible, so if a moral law does prove the existence of God, it simultaneously excludes the “Biblical God” as a candidate. Oops.

Unfortunately, the “scientific discovery” process promised by the book’s title ends after a few pages of this flawed argument. Demaree then turns a bit preachy and remains that way to the end. I scanned the rest, but could not get interested after the topic of the title was left behind. All in all it’s not a bad book, actually quite inspirational in places, as Demaree focuses on God’s attributes of love and mercy, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting to read.

Published by Eric Demaree, © 2014, Kindle Edition

ISBN: none