Believing Is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith by Michael Guillen

Believing Is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith Reviews

• 
  ☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣

  Q:
  Not only do many of today’s young people equate opinion with fact, but they also believe that opinions and feelings are more important than facts and that faith is like an ugly four-letter word.
  This pervasive malady is bad news for both science and religion. The worst of all worlds.The personal and social fallout from such a severely misguided worldview portends a grim future for you, me, and our loved ones. For the United States. For the planet. (c) SomeONE, FINALLY, out there, paying attention to this! Thank God!
  
  Q:
  As a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and Christian, I have a worldview broad enough to accommodate both the scientific method and the Bible . . . reason and faith . . . the universe and God. (c)
  Q:
  ... many individuals—and you might be one of them—see logic and faith as implacable adversaries and, therefore, believe they must choose between the two. Worst of all, they talk up the importance of evidence-based thinking but have a woefully fractured view of what it is. (c)
  Q:
  “Sure,” I said. “What’s the problem?”“You know that giant pendulum out in the rotunda? My producer says that once you get it going, it’ll never stop swinging. I don’t agree,” he said. “I think you need to push it now and then to keep it going.”For me, it was a no-brainer. “It’s called a Foucault pendulum,” I explained. “And there isn’t much friction to slow it down—just a little rubbing where the steel cable attaches to the ceiling. But it’s enough to gradually slow it down; so, yes, it does need to be nudged now and then.”Graham leapt at my explanation. “Wow!” he said. “Would you like to be on television?” (c) Wait! what about the air? It's also providing friction. And the gravity force? It's also affecting pendulum on its way (and matters at least on the upswing), doesn't it?
  Q:
  evidence-based faith is profound, indispensable, and potent. In fact, it is the mightiest power in the universe. (c)
• 
  Stephanie Agnes-Crockett

  I requested and received a complimentary copy of the book from the author and the publisher.
  Author: Michael Guillen, PhD
  Publisher: Tyndale House
  On-Sale: Next Week! (Sept. 7th)
  Synopsis: Scientist Michael Guillen outlines the formation of his worldview, highlighting the ways that science informed and intersected with his developing faith.
  Scripture Connection
  
  “For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
  
  Rom. 1:20
  
  About the Author
  
  Michael Guillen has not one or two, but THREE doctorates, in some very involved and complex fields. He studied physics, astronomy and mathematics before becoming a science correspondent for ABC News. In this capacity, he has traveled the world’s breadth and depth, plunging into a volcanic crater and submerging beneath sea level to investigate the Titanic.
  
  What I Liked
  
  Believing is Seeing caught my eye on NetGalley. I really liked the cover design, which features various scientific sketches, equations and symbols. While I’m unfortunately unable to identify all of these, the effect is really cool— and you don’t have to be a scientist to appreciate this book.
  
  As someone who is not a big fan of nonfiction, I thought that this book would be a great resource and hopefully introduce me to some neat scientific principles that tie-in with my faith. While the book was a little bit different than what I had expected, (more of a personal narrative driving home the importance of worldview) I was very impressed with the engaging writing. Little wonder, since the author has a background working in the news, and got the job because a producer “liked how [he] explained things.”
  
  Worldview is at the center of Guillen’s latest title, which emphasizes the importance of having a solid worldview. Throughout the book, Guillen shares moments from his own life story and faith journey.
  
  Cool Themes
  
  Guillen demonstrates that everyone, including scientists and atheists, has faith. While this is definitely an argument that I’ve heard from Christians, before, I feel that Guillen has a lot more credibility (from a worldly standpoint) in making the claim, since he has spent so much of his life studying science and performing research and experiments. He is not spouting off with an easy rebuttal when he says that atheists require faith, too. Instead, he spends time poking holes in science, not to tear it down but to say, essentially, “These are some things that we can’t explain (or prove.) When we build our scientific reasoning on these premises, we are acting out our faith.”
  Guillen argues that everyone has a worldview, whether or not they spend a lot of time cultivating it. Ultimately, in desperate situations, people are clinging to their worldviews. And, they are acting on those beliefs.
  The author delves into the parallels between belief in science and belief in Christianity, showing how both belief systems provide similar answers to certain fundamental questions.
  I also really enjoyed the discussion about light and how the Scriptural and scientific truths align on this.
  Audience
  
  I originally thought that this book was for a Christian audience. Having finished reading, I think a more appropriate audience would actually be people who are uncertain of their worldview. I can also see that this book is targeted toward a young audience, including Christians who may find that their worldview is being questioned. With that said, I think that Christians can definitely learn from and appreciate the book— particularly the idea that science and faith are not mutually exclusive. And the parallels between science and Scripture were a lot of fun!
  
  Content Concerns
  
  Guillen alludes to the age of earth in millions of years and I’m not sure what exactly his beliefs are regarding a literal six day creation.
  
  Recommendation
  
  I think this book is an excellent tool for young people (say, high-school/ college-age)— Christians and non-Christians alike! I believe this can be an apologetic/ evangelistic tool for truth-seekers of varying backgrounds.
• 
  Maria Klondike

  2 star average. 3 stars for some interesting ideas, 2 stars for a lack of style and sometimes a lack of substance, and 1 star for transphobia. Overall, a mediocre read with some troubling views and only a few takeaways. Perhaps best used to find real works of substance using the references. I will certainly not be recommending this to anyone.
  
  The review:
  
  God has worked miracles within our lifetime. We need only look at Michael Guillen for proof of that. The miracle is that the man is married despite telling his wife she would always be second to science.
  
  You cannot separate this book from the author. Michael has woven the personal into this book so tightly they are beyond quantumly entangled. So in addressing the book, I must also address the man.
  
  The good: I really like the idea of faith being an inherent aspect of human nature. Just like IQ and EQ, there is SQ: spiritual quotient. The ultimate faith is an informed IQ-SQ one. The metaphor of IQ-SQ 3D glasses actually helped me come up with a cool figure to use for my dissertation, so thank you for that.
  
  The bad.
  
  This book doesn’t understand its audience. Which is such a major failing. It’s trying to be all things to all people, but for someone who spent a major part of his life communicating to the general public for a living… Michael really sucks at it! He flicks back and forth between the experiential aspect of his religious experience and complex physical and mathematical concepts. One appeals to the religious, the other to physicists, of which I’m both, so I feel like I can say with some confidence that while he does, on occasion, actually achieve his lofty goal of marrying science and religion in a translogical union, he usually falls flat on his face.
  
  They say the mother of learning is repetition. Well, Michael has taken that to heart. He says everything at least twice, and I have to believe it’s for two reasons. One: he’s padding. Two: he doesn’t trust his audience is paying attention so he needs to emphasize the important things. Apparently he thinks his audience is smart enough to understand abstract physics concepts, but not enough to remember what he said twenty pages ago.
  
  This odd combination of high hopes and condescension makes a lot of sense when you read the last few pages of the text where he says pretty directly that the book is for people younger than 26, because 26 is when your worldview gets set in stone. (Sources? Not this time.) And everything clicks into place because everything Michael has said in this book about Gen Z reeks of derision. Gen Z is a bunch of children seeking answers and finding them in all the wrong places. Gen Z doesn’t use logical reasoning. Gen Z believes whatever silly thought strikes them as true. Gen Z needs to be saved from themselves. And, cherry on top: Gen Z thinks transpeople aren’t delusional.
  
  Yeah. The book all about “expanding your worldview to encompass things you can’t understand because they’re not a part of your material existence” draws the line at transpeople. This isn’t even irony. This is hypocrisy. Michael equates pedophiles to transpeople, condemning a vulnerable group of people as perverted and dangerous, and yet he sits there on his high horse loftily asking his readers if our worldview is as big as his.
  
  The audacity of this man. He spent the whole book trying to convince his readers that faith is big enough for IQ and SQ and yet somehow, he fails to use both when it comes to transpeople. He is so blinded by his personal experiences and biases that he cannot even begin to imagine that God isn’t limited by flesh. He refuses to accept the testimony of transpeople because it doesn’t make logical sense to him even as he accepts the testimony of the apostles that Christ rose from the dead and ascended bodily into heaven on a cloud.
  
  I said it was a miracle he’s married. Nah. The real miracle would be the Spirit opening his heart to the translogical truths that God doesn’t make mistakes, She isn’t limited by flesh, and She loves Her children exactly as She made them: in Her image, trans and all.
• 
  Reuben Nuxoll

  Excellent presentation of what faith looks like for an atheist scientist of the highest level who is willing to challenge himself on reality and desire others to do so as well. Believing is seeing, and seeing is reacting. He invites all of us to challenge our worldviews, and shows that everyone believes something, hopefully what makes most sense.
• 
  Kayhell

  Very well-structured and approachable, rich in relevant examples.
  
  This is author's own experience with faith and science so often it reads a bit memoir-ish, But overall, it's a collection of insights that he considers valuable. Although I found a lot to agree in this book, I also had points of disagreement. That, of course, doesn't really take away from the book as I found both valuable, the latter perhaps even more so as it helped me figure out where I stand on some issues. Most passages were discussion-worthy and ignited me to ponder on the subject matter which I always appreciate.
  
  Similarly, as truth is bigger than proof, I think faith is bigger than God or religion. Therefore, I don't think atheism and faith are mutually exclusive. With the risk of sounding nit-picky, I don't think faith and religion are interchangeable words, and although I didn't necessarily get the impression that the author thinks that I would have appreciated less ambiguity with the use of these two.
  
  I'm not sure I’m the right audience for this book. Personally, I’m not an atheist, and I’m pursuing science, so I don't exactly need evidence for faith and religion and science co-existing. I think this book would be more beneficial for people who see science and religion as the opposite sides of a spectrum, no matter which side they favour. From that point of view, I think this book would provide much more food for thought.
  
  So, is believing seeing? Even if I did start with favourable notions towards the title, this book convinced me thoroughly.
• 
  Michael Brooks

  A really solid book. The best parts of the book are when he puts science, math, astronomy, and the worldview of the modern science community under scrutiny.
  
  Key components of his argument are not something I necessarily agree with. But, overall very good. What he argues and demonstrates are the following:
  
  
  #1The axioms/beliefs of science line up best and are in harmony with Christianity more so than atheism.
  
  #2 Science demonstrates that there are realities we cannot prove but know to be true. This supports Christian belief and shows that Christianity and Science work in harmony.
  
  #3 The universe is filled with translogical truths which are deep truths that do not always follow aristitilion logic but are still true.
  
  #4 Humans uniquely have an IQ and an SQ (spiritual quotient that can detect translogical realities) which are essential to our understanding of the universe. Translgocial realities are an area of disagreement or at least require great care and consideration before agreeing to.
  
  #5 On their own math, physics, astronomy, and the scientific method are lacking in their abilities to answer central questions about our universe.
  
  #6 The scientific method is limited in what it can offer and is built on axioms/beliefs that cannot be tested nor proven.
• 
  Hannah Blanton

  Haiku summary :)
  
  Translogical truth.
  Science reveals God's design.
  Truth bigger than proof
• 
  Zaira

  This is a good book to read if someone in your life is convinced that science and Christianity are at odds and/or believes science can in some way save us from present sadness.
• 
  Jim Packer

  What an amazing read this book is. What I would say is this book must be read with an open mind whatever your stance or belief on the subject of god and/or science. I did note many one star reviews before reading this book and can only assume that the book was read from a closed mind point of view. If you read this book to to confirm your preconceived beliefs or to ridicule the beliefs of others (no matter what side of the subject matter you are on) then you will miss the point and worth of the book. I will not say where my own beliefs were before and after reading this book so as to not give a future reader a preconceived opinion. This book is a must read. The scientific facts are explained in a simple but clear way and by themselves are insightful and interesting. I could go on and on but really my advice is, read the book.
• 
  eClaghorn

  Sandwiched between the autobiographical section and the personal growth and life application conclusion of this book is a philosophical understanding of what faith is, and why everyone has/uses it. The difference between IQ-based faith and SQ-based faith is the most important part of Dr. Guillen thesis. Chapter 6 is therefore the keystone chapter. Roy Clouser has expressed similar ideas. When 'science' believing atheists express a lack of belief what they always miss is that they are expressing a belief. Your worldview matters. It changes everything. This book provides a way to evaluate yours.
• 
  Josie

  In his book Michael Guillen documents his pilgrimage from a ‘pious scientific monk’ through an intellectual and spiritual quest to integrate science and Christianity and establish his current worldview which encompasses both.
  
  Guillen finds through his scholarly analysis and comparisons of the intrinsic nature of science and Christianity that they are not, as is often thought, mutually exclusive. He has found for himself arguments that enable him to put aside his atheism to reconcile a belief in God / Christianity alongside his work as a scientist.
  
  The explanations and discussions used to conclude that the scientific and Christian worldviews are fundamentally compatible are thought provoking and convincing. The inclusion of a few personal revelatory spiritual experiences was an interesting deviation from the largely academic discussion and was a highlight of the book for me.
  
  A belief in God does not produce any conflicts for me personally, but for those who have a science based worldview and who perhaps discount the notion of incorporating God or a spiritually based belief into their lives, I would recommend this as a thought provoking read.
• 
  Marian Jacobs

  DNFed this book in chapter five when the author started going off about the Bible not being logical. WOW! I’m am very very concerned with the way he was even defining logic. By “not logical” he meant that it didn’t line up with his worldview. The example he gave was that Darwin said that the strongest will always win and survive. Since he saw that statement as logical and Jesus contradicts this, that meant the Bible was illogical. *facepalm* But then he still decided to have faith in this illogical religion?!
  
  John 1:1 refers to Jesus as the logos. Traditionally this is translated as “word.” But it can also be translated as “logic.” Jesus *is* logic just as much as Jesus is love. He is literally the embodiment of logic. After all, God never contradicts himself!
  
  I am perfectly fine reading a book a scientist who isn’t a theologian. I get that he didn’t have any idea what he was talking about sometimes, especially when reading the Old Testament for the first time as an unbeliever. But to go so far as to teach that the Bible is illogical and teach that people should believe it anyway is going waaay too far. It’s like telling people that it’s ok to be a relativist. I just couldn’t continue reading…
• 
  Jerrod Griebel

  Physicist Michael Guillen presents a thesis that “Believing is seeing; seeing is reacting” in his latest book. In other words, A leads to B (believing leads to seeing the world differently; seeing leads to reacting). For so long, people have argued that seeing leads to believing, but in using more scientific evidence than I could fully comprehend in an audiobook, Guillen argues that what we believe (our worldview) greatly affects how we see the world. Through his work in science, he realized that there are so many things we don’t know nor understand about the world, but when science is viewed through a faith-filled mindset, many of those questions find answers and beauty in a universe of order rather than random happenstance.
  
  Writing in a straightforward yet simple manner, Guillen presents avid scientific evidence for why atheism is actually contradictory to the scientific method. Along the way, he explains his own journey toward Christianity and how that radically changed his worldview and his work as a physicist for the better.
• 
  Dawn

  I love when science in its quest for truth leads one to the greatest Truth of all! Love his explanations on why science requires faith and how if you are looking for certainty you will have to look elsewhere.
• 
  sana

  i liked the beginning but then near the end i was really forcing myself to get through it
• 
  Drtaxsacto

  Michael Guillen is a thoughtful guy with qualifications up the kazoo on science in Cosmology, Physics and Mathematics. But he is also a Christian. What this book attempts to do (quite successfully in my opinion) is to reconcile science and spiritual belief.
  
  For all of those who yammer that "the science is settled" on any subject in science - he offers Einstein who argued that the point of science is that it is always testing existing knowledge. It is never settled. That is the point.
  
  Fundamentally he argues that any belief system, including science and atheism, includes a series of hypotheses which are unprovable. We begin with faith about key issues and positions and then build on that those unprovable assumptions. That's true for issues in science and issues in religion - although he points out that many of the basic stories in the Bible have lots of specific confirmations in the historical record.
  
  Guillen makes a distinction between IQ and SQ (the spiritual equivalent of IQ on faith related topics). He suggests that without both, one cannot think carefully about the great issues in life.
  
  When I started this book I was reminded of Pascal's wager in which the noted mathematician argued that even if he did not believe in God that it was a better bet to hold that belief (Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (an eternity in Hell).
  
  But as I read Guillen's arguments I thought his book was so much more. And it is.
• 
  Rikuskey

  DNF. Author lost me when he presented his chart explaining how Christianity and Science are similar and skipped to the end and found nothing great there. He said he compared other religions in this chart and Christianity was the BEST alignment. How do I know this if you don’t give me the others? Were there hard “Nos” scattered with the other Abrahamic faiths, who worship the same God? Working off my own basic googling, Judaism and Islam also answer Yes to the questions he presented us. So why is Christianity “better” than the other Abrahamic faiths, author? You read the Bible, but did you do any research into the history of Christianity and how the Bible has been pieced together and how it was decided to include which books? What about how the scribes would change things in the Bible? And how we don’t have the original texts and how the gospels were written long after Jesus died? Can you use your science to explain this to me and tell me why I should still believe? I’m still looking for that answer but I find the same thing in every “proof Of Christianity” book… author has an epiphany, turns to Christ, and becomes a judgmental prick. That referring to him judging how trans people are just “responding to their emotions” and doesn’t think maybe that’s literally their personality and how God created them? No of course not. What about the science that shows that this is natural and deals with estrogen levels? After all he is a scientist! If I can preform a quick Google search to find a peer reviewed study about this and I have no science degree, why is he saying it’s a “post-truth behavior” that is a “fantasy or outright lie” and then crying about being called “judgmental” for being that? Im sick of reading Christian hate and outright or thinly veiled persecution complex.
• 
  Handra

  The book started pretty well by explaining science with combination with Bible and Christianity. However, the more i read the book the more I’m getting confused on what the writer was actually trying to say. The comparison between Science and Bible do not seem to make any sense to me also. Everything just feel too twisted and forced. Only able to read at most 40% of the book. Decided to just close it and find the next great read.
• 
  Moth

  interesting i suppose but it didn't need to be transphobic at the end like that wasn't necessary lol
• 
  Hannah

  My dad chose this book to read aloud with me during some hard times, so I'll always have good memories associated with it.
  
  Guillen is very much a part of this book, first as an idiosyncratic PhD in 3 disciplines (math, physics, and astronomy), as a Harvard professor, and then as a science reporter who's done things like facing a brush with death while exploring the ruins of the Titanic. Another reviewer described it as memoir-esque, and I definitely agree. A lot of the intrigue of the book comes in getting to know and learn about Guillen himself, and his own evolving ideas about science and faith. He's an enthusiastic narrator who makes more obscure topics accessible and interesting, even if, at times, it feels like he could step out of the spotlight.
  
  The glimpses that he offers into math, physics, astronomy, and the scientific method (surprisingly ill-defined and variable depending on the scientist/researcher) are each fascinating, especially in developing the idea of translogical truths: that truths we see in science often transcend what would be "logically" possible as they seem inherently contradictory.
  
  Though he does point out how much science has yet to explain about life and our universe, he doesn't use that as "proof" of God, decrying a "god of the gaps" idea that humans have faith only to explain what we still cannot explain, but rather proposes that current understandings and evidence can reasonably lead to faith. He also talks about spiritual intelligence (for example, inspiration) as a uniquely human trait and contends that we should use both our IQ and SQ in our work and effort to learn more about the universe. This part felt a little further out there, but it was entertaining and intriguing to go with him on it.
  
  The last chapter or two of the book were a little disappointing; it felt like they took a sudden professorial turn, with the T/F quiz especially... I appreciated the review of the book's concepts, but felt like this quiz went a little far in predicting possible crises in the serious moments of life (and this comes from someone sympathetic to his premise). I also wish he hadn't begun the last chapter with a takedown of transgender people as an exemplar of people putting emotions over evidence; it felt like this was a sudden left turn and marked a part of the book that felt increasingly based on value judgments rather than the thoughtful conversation between scientific discipline that characterized the earlier part of the book. Honestly, I wonder if he was losing interest here and just rushed through his conclusion.
  
  I still find it a worthwhile read, though I might just skip the last chapter: I definitely appreciate his ability to make scientific concepts accessible, and it made me regard our world, the sciences, and God with more appreciation and awe.
• 
  Joseph

  “As I investigated the credibility of what the Bible says about Jesus, I quickly realized there’s far more hard evidence for his resurrection than there is for quasars generally and ULAS J1342+0928 in particular.”
  —
  “I’ve always listened skeptically to other Christians’ conversion stories,” writes Guillen. “It’s not that I think they’re fibbing or stretching the truth… [but] their highly personal narratives are not legitimate scientific hypotheses.”
  I agree. As valuable as these testimonies are, I never felt compelled by them as a non-believer to believe. There (almost annoyingly) was a sense of profound logic that I could not ignore, though, about Christianity that I felt Christians were not as interested in. But this logic was the very thing that compelled me into understanding what a relationship with God was like and why I eventually became a follower of Christ.
  Dr. Guillen does a superb job of detailing how, as a self-proclaimed “scientific monk,” he came to God not through the Bible or any religious text or anyone telling him to go to church—but through the wonders of the universe by studying physics. He is a great teacher of physics—not as an intimidating subject, but as a work of art. A few weird inserts of unwarranted opinions as well as cheesy final pages near the end slow down his momentum, but excellent nonetheless. As much as he tries to avoid it, he does sound like a boomer at times.
  3.5/5 telescopes.
• 
  Rob Seabrook

  I read this book as background research for another project that I am working on, and I am so glad I did. Michael is clearly a gifted communicator, highly intelligent and able to grasp incredibly complicated concepts and explain them back in a coherent way that is wholly understandable to the reader… especially someone like me who does not have much of a scientific brain. He makes the science accessible.
  The topic of “science vs. religion” is loved by commentators from both sides, who love to prod the hornets’ nest, but Michael is fully qualified to comment from both camps... which of course are not opposing camps after all. He is honest about what is unknown by both science and religions, and his personal search for answers and truths is what is driving his studies and his writing.
  Michael clearly has the most amazing enquiring mind...
  Read the full review at
  https://www.robseabrook.com/believing...
• 
  Becky White

  Dr. Guillen spent most of this book discussing how much of what we call "science" must be taken by faith. Things that we have evidence for but can't prove, like quantum theory, black holes, black energy. Mathematical axioms that we use in order to make proofs, even thought its not possible to prove the axioms. And things that just don't follow logic, including mathematics itself (which I found surprising). He described the lengths that scientists go to to get us to put our faith in THEM even though the theories they espouse cannot be proven or their experiments replicated. In short, I thought that this book did a good job of exposing the contradictions and inconsistencies of the whole faith vs. science debate