A book by two French mathematicians is set to make waves in America by claiming to provide a definitive, science-backed answer to the age-old question: Does God exist?

The book, “God, the Science, the Evidence: The Dawn of a Revolution,” argues that far from disproving the existence of a divine creator, modern science actually provides compelling evidence for it. The authors, Michel-Yves Bolloré, 79, and Olivier Bonnassies, 59, are now bringing their bestseller to America with an English edition, after selling more than 400,000 copies since its initial release in France in 2021.

“We’re living within a surprising intellectual shift,” Mr. Bonnassies told Publishers Weekly in a recent interview. “For four centuries, from Copernicus to Freud, via Galileo, Newton, Laplace, and Darwin, science seemed able to explain more and more of the world without the need for the hypothesis of God.”

No longer. “Things have now changed, and the pendulum of science has swung back in the opposite direction. Until recently, believing in God seemed incompatible with science. Now, reason has come full circle. Science is now God’s ally,” he said.

The 580-page tome by Mr. Bolloré, a computer engineer, and Mr. Bonnassies, an entrepreneur and theologist, will be released in the United States on October 14 with an initial print run of 110,000 copies. The release is accompanied by a series of academic conferences that began last month at Princeton University. The book is also being promoted through a documentary series.

In the book, the authors critique materialism, an idea that says that everything can be explained by physical matter and processes. They argue that scientific discoveries surrounding the universe’s origin and the complexity of life point toward a single logical conclusion: a creator.

In the interview with Publishers Weekly, Mr. Bonnassies explained the core of their argument. “Our work is based in three scientific conclusions: that we live in what we call space-time that inextricably links matter, space, and time together; that all this seems to have a beginning; and that the parameters of the universe are very fine-tuned so that if you change a little, life is impossible.”

One of their main points revolves around the Big Bang theory. While scientists generally agree the universe began with the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, the question of what caused it remains unanswered. An earlier theory of a “big crunch”—an eternal cycle of expansion and contraction where matter is used over and over—was discredited in the 1990s when astronomers found the universe’s expansion is accelerating.

“The theory doesn’t work,” Mr. Bolloré said in the recent interview. “The reasonable mind must hold that our universe has one beginning.” He argues the only rational explanation is an external force outside the material world — a creator God.

The English edition has garnered a foreword from a Nobel-winning physicist, Robert Wilson, who discovered cosmic microwave background radiation. While not fully convinced, Mr. Wilson acknowledged the book’s logic. 

“Although the general thesis … that a higher mind could be at the origin of the universe does not provide a satisfying explanation for me, I can accept its coherence,” he writes. “If the universe had a beginning, then we cannot avoid the question of creation.”

“This is not a book about faith or religion,” Mr. Bolloré said, admitting that they cannot definitively prove God’s existence. “The best you can do is to compare the two sides of the scale,” he said.

But he added that pondering the question might just be enough. “I think that everybody should ask themselves, at some point in their life, ‘Are we just the result of chance and necessity? Or are we more than that?'”

“From the point of view of knowledge, it’s very simple to know if a creator God exists. It is the same question as, ‘Do Martians exist?’ It’s just a question. And we just want to know the answer. Faith and religion ask, ‘What is the name of God? What does God say? What does He want?’” Mr. Bolloré said. “We are not interested by what God can say, who He is, what He wants, what He promised. We are just interested to know if a creator God exists.”