THE EYE OF GOD

Costin, a self-taught philosopher, questions traditional notions of God in this debut nonfiction work.

The author has lived his entire life in the U.S. Bible Belt and was raised in an evangelical Southern Baptist home with grandparents who traveled to various churches as part of a gospel singing group. “Growing up,” he writes, “I wasn’t aware of anyone not believing in God.” Blending memoir with metaphysical reflection on the nature of religion, Costin notes in the book’s early chapters that, despite his upbringing, his natural curiosity made him question things that other Baptists automatically embraced. Reading the Bible on a deeper level didn’t help, either, as it only made him question his denomination’s literalism. Attempts at discussing the essentials of the faith with peers quickly led to dead ends. Once, when he suggested that the Bible’s narrative might be “only stories told by people long ago and not the word of God,” one friend simply laughed and said, “What?!” It wasn’t until 2019 that the author, an information-technology professional, had an epiphany that now forms the thesis of this book: He argues that “what science calls the force of Gravity is what humans call God.” Like descriptions of the deity as an unchanging element across time and space, gravity exists, per the author’s logic, as the defining force of the universe. The book combines philosophy with scientific assessments of life, physics, and human development. Among the four fundamental forces in the universe (gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear), the author asserts, gravity is the only one “that does not come from particles that we can find.” Indeed, per this book, “It is one of the great mysteries of physics that the origin of Gravity is unaccounted for.”

Costin’s statement that this redefinition of the divine “unequivocally proves the existence of God” may not satisfy either skeptics or the religiously devout, but it does offer an intriguing meditation on God’s transcendence. It may also offer scientifically minded readers a way to rethink conceptions of God that eschew dogmatic aspects of faith. Costin has a firm grasp of the literature of classical philosophy, and he walks readers through the work of some of the discipline’s great thinkers, from Plato and Epictetus to Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone de Beauvoir. The book supports its philosophical footing with the writings of noted atheists, physicists, and social scientists, including more than 50 research endnotes and a five-page bibliography. At fewer than 120 total pages, this is an accessible book whose most absorbing passages are written in a clear, sensible style. It concludes with the practical application of its redefinition of God, arguing that if “Gravity is the man behind the curtain making the universe go,” then there’s ultimately “no great and powerful ruler to tell you how to live.” However, religious skeptics and others may be drawn to its final message of self-empowerment—a reference to The Wizard of Oz: “You don’t need to be helped any longer. You have always had the power.”

An intriguing philosophical exploration of the intersection of science and religion.