Calculating God

There are zero fresh or original ideas in this book. It's as if Robert J Sawyer (who in his extraordinarily condescending intro to the audiobook says only young earth creationists and people who aren't true scientists won't enjoy what this book has to say) decided to "write the controversy" and then at the end realized that he needed to get a little trippy (hint: It's the same trippy as 2001: A Space Odyssey).

The 2nd half would have been interesting if it wasn't preceded by the first half of going through all the creationist arguments. The atheist scientist doesn't even make good attempts to refute them...because we all know, from the title and blurb, that he's going to give in and join the deist love circle, he does have cancer after all and we (Mr Sawyer at least) know that all dying people are religious.

I won't even get started on the C-plot villains who are southern US abortion-clinic-bombers here to show the aliens Jesus and destroy the devil's fossils. One of them is name Cooter.

If you want a scientific treatment of a highly implausible what-if, go pick up Anathem, twice as long, a thousand times more interesting.