June 16, 2012, Hong Kong
Paperback 2007, 526 pages.
After the death of his wife, the brilliant scientist Hazelius goes about inventing a religion by getting the government to build a $40-billion particular collider to replicate the conditions of the big bang. He has it rigged so that a program claiming to be God appears as the energy level is increased to the maximum.
Meanwhile, politicians, tele-evangelists, and native Americans get involved, and the end result is that Hazelius is branded the Anti-Christ, and the collider exploded. Hazelius is burned at the stake by a mob, but the new religion ends up being established.
The author in his "Note on the Paperback Edition" claims he is not trying to put down religion, and I basically agree with him. It is equally obvious to me, however, that he thinks science is the answer.
As a thriller, this is not a bad book. As an argument for why science is better than religion, or an explanation of some of the metaphysical concepts associated with cosmology, the book falls short, at least for me. One big hole I see is how the AI program passes the Turing Test if it is indeed planted by Hazelius? The author meekly tries to explain it away by having Hazelius wonder if the program ends up being more sophisticated than he intended; and by doing so also admits there are elements outside science at work here.
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