Calculating God

This book by Robert Sawyer came up once on Lex Fridman in the episodes we index. That mention was a genuine on-air recommendation, not just a passing reference. The people who brought it up: guest. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.

Calculating God is the new near-future SF thriller from the popular and award-winning Robert J. Sawyer. An alien shuttle craft lands outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. A six-legged, two-armed alien emerges, who says, in perfect English, "Take me to a paleontologist." It seems that Earth, and the alien's home planet, and the home planet of another alien species traveling on the alien mother ship, all experienced the same five cataclysmic events at about the same time (one example of these "cataclysmic events" would be the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs). Both alien races believe this proves the existence of God: i.e.