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66 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The physics of faith, Sep 15 2007
A number of years ago, the late [great?] Stephen J. Gould produced "Rocks of Ages". The work was designed as a peace offering between those relying on reason and those relying on faith to view the cosmos. Gould, like some others of the time, was willing to let "moral" issues remain in the hands of religious leaders. Science, he declared, was a separate "magisterium". Victor Stenger declares that such a separation is false and misleading. He argues that gods, particularly that of the "three great monotheisms" is a fit subject for scientific study. In this captivating and skillful analysis, he does just that. The results, ably presented in fluent language, are devastating to the notion that any supernatural being, especially the Judeo-Christian-Islamic deity, has substance. If such a thing could exist, it would be too remote from human conditions to have any meaning.
Although Stenger credits Galileo and Darwin with significant contributions to pushing a god away from human affairs, it's his own field of physics that provide the most compelling evidence, or lack of it, for any gods. As with any research subject, the author formulates hypotheses explaining why a god should exist, then tests them for valid evidence. To apply scientific methods to examining the evidence for the supernatural, he explains that ideas about the world are observed and models derived to explain their workings. Those models must be tested by valid methods, comprehensive and definitive. His examination of intercessory prayer as a healing mechanism [Chap. 3] demonstrates how flawed methods skew evidence. Ignoring real evidence, as his examination of the "Illusion of Design" demonstrates, has allowed such commentators as Michael Behe and William Dembski to forward untestable concepts of how life's processes work.
Perhaps the most compelling section [Chap. 4 "Cosmic Evidence"] in this book is his discussion of the big bang. How often have we heard the challenge: "What caused the Big Bang?" by believers who need a deity to initiate the cosmos, even if it clearly has no role in it. Stenger takes us back to the first instance of the universe's beginning. He notes that the actual origins may be debated: the universe may recycle itself or have come from another universe, for example. Ours, however, began in chaos, but quickly followed the laws of physics the author has studied for so long. From that point, there's no role for a deity to play - Nature's own rules are in command. Physics, not gods, gave us stars, galaxies, the heavy elements needed to form life and a place where conditions were conducive to that result. As a conclusion to this segment, he even asks why there should be a universe at all - the ancient philosophical question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" His answer clarifies the question from a physicist's empirical stance.
As he progresses through the book, the author postulates questions about what justifies a god - particularly that of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions. The roles assigned to the deity, one whose adherents declare it to be "omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent [at least to humans]" fail every empirical test. It is certainly not "all-knowing" or it would prevent some events that go against its own dicta. It is clearly not "completely powerful" since too many phenomena cannot be attributed to it. The "benevolent" argument was destroyed by Charles Darwin, and the history of its own actions belie that contention. A god demanding genocide or acts such as the destruction of the World Trade Center, can hardly claim "benevolence". To attribute to such a deity the origin or definition of "morals" is false, and Stenger rebukes Gould and others for making such an attribution. Morality, as Stenger shows, is widespread across the animal kingdom, a product of natural selection, not divine ordinance or declaration. This fact, he contends, is important for us all to understand in order not to fall prey to leaders who inflict arbitrary decisions on us claiming divine inspiration.
It is difficult to praise this book highly enough. Although there have been many books recently published to show why belief in the supernatural is misplaced, few have taken a hard scientific path to make their case. Stenger's book, although the latest in a string by this author, is his most outstanding effort. Readable and informative, it should be taken up by any who make arguments for faith in deities and who declare religion should guide our lives. Even the dedicated non-theists will find it useful. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why scientists don't believe, Mar 9 2008
It's been so commonly said that 'one cannot prove of disprove the existence of God', one forgets (of course) that this is practically untrue. The specific claims of God, and how the universe is created, would be different if God existed than if he didn't. Rather than just disproving the claims and then backing away, Victor Stenger shows how science has moved so far that there is the inductive case that God does not exist. There have been many books on religous superstition, but this one has something a little new to say, and a bit more forcefully. I highly recommend it.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If God exists there should be some evidence, May 24 2009
Imagine our pre-civilization ancestors trying to cope with the difficulties of survival. They would have had to discover that there is some sort of causal relationship between actions and events. They would have paid attention to their surroundings and would have begun early on to perceive a relationship between temporal events. They would have wondered about the life-giving sun, wondered why on certain days it was covered with thick clouds that on occasion provided life-giving rain to drop from the sky. Injuries, sickness, hunger, dangers of all sorts were about.
One can easily imagine the response was to try to assign some agency to the causal pattern observed, and then to try to influence that agent in one's own interests. That seems to me to describe a rudimentary human approach to gathering information and for trying to predict and influence future events. Survival is the mother of science. Observation, hypothesis, prediction, verifiability and falsifiability become the best way we humans have of explaining our selves and our world. With limited knowledge and limited senses we would have been hard pressed to understand molecular processes let alone atomic and sub-atomic actions. What caused the death of my seemingly healthy children? Why did we get no rain this season? How did our enemies find us?
Hypothesis: some invisible agent is at work. And so forth ... one can see how easily and naturally we developed a scientific method, at first quite rudimentary, but the beginnings of a way of knowing about the world that worked from time to time. We posited agents, named them, placed them as hypotheticals in an imaginary world that soon became populated with these gods. As we learned more and more about the way the natural world works we started to depopulate the other world. Many spirits became a regimented set of kings and princes. But still it seemed even they were subject to a higher power. Maybe there was only one all powerful spirit who controlled the thousands of things that are: a hypothesis that seemed beyond testing.
Descartes hypothesized that there were two basic kinds of stuff: spirit and matter. The Church could look after the spiritual world if they would in return leave him alone to work in the world of matter. Later thinkers would argue that we humans have two fundamentally different ways of knowing: empiricism and faith. We have learned the power of the scientific, empirical approach. It has turned out to be our best way of knowing about the world and ourselves. On the way to the present we have shed many of the gods we had projected into the world as the need for them disappeared and the hypotheses they were created to answer were found to be false. Stenger offers evidence that we should cast off the last God, the last of a series of failed hypotheses.
In Science, Evolution, and Creationism (2008) published by the National Academy of Sciences the committee concludes their useful and available booklet with this observation: "Science can neither prove nor disprove religion. Scientific advances have called some religious beliefs into question, such as the ideas that the Earth was created very recently, that the Sun goes around the Earth, and that mental illness is due to possession by spirits or demons. But many religious beliefs involve entities or ideas that currently are not within the domain of science. Thus, it would be false to assume that all religious beliefs can be challenged by scientific findings."
As Professor Stenger's title indicates he is going to argue that in fact science has a lot to say about religious propositions. The other so-called new atheists have usually claimed that it is only highly unlikely that God exists, but Stenger's book presents a series of arguments intended to show that there is no evidence in the universe that even hints at the existence of an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent being who resides in some supernatural environs and is revealed to humans from time to time through words and deeds.
A new paperback edition of the book has been released with a foreword by Christopher Hitchens endorsing Victor Stenger's work. Stressing the importance of the book's overall contribution, Hitchens says, "with the arrival on the scene of Victor Stenger's book, the already revived and extended argument for unbelief has undergone a sort of quantitative and qualitative acceleration. One side in this dispute is going to have to yield." Hitchens also calls God: The Failed Hypothesis "extremely tough and impressive...a great book...a huge addition to the arsenal of argument." It is a carefully argued book, but I do not think we need revert to military metaphor to describe it.
In God: The Failed Hypothesis Stenger contends that, if God exists, some evidence for this existence should be detectable by scientific means, especially considering the central role that God is alleged to play in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans. Treating the traditional Judeo-Christian and Islamic God concept like any other scientific hypothesis, Stenger examines all of the claims made for God's existence. After evaluating all the scientific evidence, Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God. What does he mean by "God"? For most of the book he is dealing with the 3O God; that is, the God whose attributes comprise omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipotence; in other words the God of the three desert religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Stenger argues that it is a mistake to exclude the Intelligent Design proponents from science by continuing to say of their position that it is not science because its claims are not falsifiable. He states that their claims are testable, have been tested, and are indeed not only falisfiable but falsified. It seems to me that any criticism of the ID religious movement should start with the observation that ID makes no positive predictions about what we should find in nature. This is mostly due to the fact that ID says nothing about the designer - the alleged top-down designer of ID who has unlimited power and could design nature to look any way she liked. Therefore anything we observe in nature is compatible with design and therefore ID makes no predictions about what we must find in nature. ID is therefore not science. Similarly, of course, the thrust of the argument in the book is that God as a hypothesis can be tested by science and shown to be a failed hypothesis.
Many of the ten chapters in the book address specifically and in ways that are accessible to the non-scientist the evidence that modern science has amassed to test the God hypothesis. Based on that evidence Stenger argues that the God hypothesis is not supported by the facts and should be shed.
In a recent interview Stenger said, "When people start using science to argue for their specific beliefs and delusions, to try to claim that they're supported by science, then scientists at least have to speak up and say, "You're welcome to your delusions, but don't say that they're supported by science. That's been my main theme, just looking at the scientific end of it (that's been my expertise), and seeing what arguments hold water, and if they don't, saying so."
Stenger's book is readable, interesting, and convincing without being condescending or strident.
© 2008 Bob Lane
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