BOOKS
Quantum Gods (2009)
Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness
Foreword by Michael Shermer
In God: The Failed Hypothesis I argued that science shows that a God who plays an important role in the universe and in human life does not exist. This still leaves open the possibility of other gods or spiritual realities. The recent popular documentary films What the Bleep Do We Know? and The Secret have promoted the claim that we can make our own reality just be thinking of it. For over thirty years now, New Age gurus have alleged that quantum mechanics has verified ancient teachings from the East that the human mind is part of a cosmic consciousness that pervades the universe.
In the meantime, Christian theologians have launched an intensive effort to find a way for God to act in the world that does not violate any laws of physics. While God can do whatever he wants, he would be acting against himself if he violated his own laws. Again quantum mechanics is proposed as a means for God to intervene. If he stays within the bounds of the quantum uncertainty principle, then his actions would not be detectable to humans. However such actions would not be an efficient way to control evens on the human scale. Chaos theory has been proposed as a mechanism for amplifying those actions.
Quantum mechanics is shown to provide no basis for cosmic consciousness or the belief that the human mind makes it own reality. It is also shown not to provide a viable basis for divine action, with or without chaos theory. Some theologians have proposed a new kind of deism in which God creates a universe with many possible pathways determined by chance. However, since the universe began in chaos it retains no memory of such a God. This leaves as the only possible God one who plays dice with the universe.
New York Times best seller!
No. 21 In March, 2007
God: The Failed Hypothesis
How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist
In my 2003 book Has Science Found God? I provided a critique of contemporary claims that science supports the existence of God and found them inadequate. In this book, I go much further and argue that science makes a strong case against the existence a God with the traditional attributes of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic God. My argument is not based simply on the gross absence of evidence for this God. Not only is there no evidence for God, I argue that the evidence we have can be used to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that this God does not exist. Not only does the universe show no evidence for God, it looks exactly as it would be expected to look if there is no God. In a final chapter I show why it is preferable to live in a Godless universe.
The New Atheism (2009)
Taking a Stand for Science and Reason
In 2004, Sam Harris published The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason that became a major bestseller. This marked the first of a series of series of bestsellers that took a harder line against religion than has been the custom among secularists: Letter to a Christian Nation by Harris (2006), The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006), Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett (2006), God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Goes Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger (2007), and God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007) by Christopher Hitchens. These authors have been recognized as the leaders of a movement called The New Atheism.
In The New Atheism, I review and expand upon the principles of New Atheism and answer many of its critics. I show how naturalism, the view that everything is matter an nothing more, is sufficient to explain all we observe in the universe from the most distant galaxies to the inner workings of the brain that result in the phenomenon of mind. Nowhere is it necessary to introduce God or the supernatural to understand the world. I dispute the claim that science has nothing to say about God and argue that absence of evidence is evidence of absence when evidence should be there and is not. In the case of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, as I show in God: The Failed Hypothesis, the lack of evidence is sufficient to conclude that he does not exist beyond a reasonable doubt.
In The New Atheism I argue that since faith is belief in the absence of evidence it should not be used to make any judgments about the world or personal life. I detail many of the horrors and terrors religion has produced over millennia and how this is all brought about by the folly of faith. I show how the Bible is unable to solve the problem of unnecessary suffering in the world. I discuss the approach to suffering in other religions. I then show how all religions teach a common morality that is not divine but of natural, human origins.
Finally I discuss the teachings of the ancient sages such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Confucius who 2500 years ago provided guidelines for the individual to cope with the problems of living, and dying, that did not depend on the existence of any supernatural forces in the universe. I call this “the natural way" as opposed to the supernatural monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These supernatural religions have poisoned the natural way by promising people life after death and encouraging the self-absorption that is so prominent both with the modern-day Christians comprising the “me” generation and Muslims who are willing to kill themselves along with thousands of others in order to guarantee highly unlikely eternal bliss.
The Comprehensible Cosmos
Where Do The Laws of Physics Come From?
(2007)
The laws of physics were not handed down from above. Nor are they somehow built into the logical structure of the universe. They are human inventions, though not arbitrary ones. They are not restrictions on the behavior of matter. They are restrictions on the way physicists may describe that behavior. In order to describe an objective reality, those descriptions cannot depend on the point of view of observers. They must be "point-of-view-invariant." When point-of-view invariance is implemented, the laws of physics follow with few additional assumptions. We live in a comprehensible cosmos.
Earlier Books
Not By Design: The Origin of the Universe (1988)
Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses (1990)
The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology (1995)
Timeless Reality:Symmetry, Simplicity and Multiple Universes (2000)
Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe (2003)
The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning
Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us
(2011)
See listing on Amazon.
A number of authors have noted that if some physical parameters were slightly changed, the universe could no longer support life, as we know it. This implies that life depends sensitively on the physics of our universe. Does this “fine-tuning” of the universe also suggest that a creator god intentionally calibrated the initial conditions of the universe such that life on earth and the evolution of humanity would eventually emerge? Some influential scientists, such as National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, think so. Others go even further, asserting that science “has found God.”
In this in-depth, lucid discussion of this fascinating and controversial topic, physicist Victor J. Stenger looks at the same evidence and comes to the opposite conclusion. He states at the outset that as a physicist he will go wherever the data takes him, even if it leads him to God. But after many years of research in particle physics and thinking about its implications, he finds that the observations of science and our naked senses not only show no evidence for God, they provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that God does not exist.
Stenger argues that many of the claims by theists are based on their misunderstanding of the science. He looks at the specific parameters and shows that plausible reasons can be found for the values they have within the existing standard models of physics and cosmology. These models are introduced in detail so that the reader has the background needed to understand the role of the parameters claimed to be fine-tuned and judge the veracity of the arguments.
He also discusses related issues such as whether or not the universe had a beginning, what quantum mechanics implies about the involvement of human consciousness in affecting reality, and whether evidence can be found in nature for a divine plan.
Although Stenger has touched on the subject of fine-tuning in other books, this is his most thorough exploration of a topic that continues to intrigue scientists and the lay public alike.
Paperback has Foreword by Christopher Hitchens
God and the Folly of Faith
The Incompatibility of Science and Religion
Foreword by Dan Barker
Must reading for anyone interested in the interaction between religion and science
It has become the prevalent view among sociologists, historians, and some theistic scientists that religion and science have never been in serious conflict. Some even claim that Christianity was responsible for the development of science. In God and the Folly of Faith, physicist Victor Stenger shows that this conclusion flies in the face of the historical facts.
In a sweeping historical survey that begins with ancient Greek science and proceeds through the Renaissance and Enlightenment to contemporary advances in physics and cosmology, Stenger makes a convincing case that Christianity held back the progress of science for 1,000 years. It is significant, he notes, that the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century occurred only after the revolts against established ecclesiastic authorities in the Renaissance and Reformation opened up new avenues of thought.
The author goes on to detail how religion and science are fundamentally incompatible in several areas: the origin of the universe and its physical parameters, the origin of complexity, holism versus reductionism, the nature of mind and consciousness, and the source of morality.
In the end Stenger is most troubled by the negative influence that organized religion often exerts on politics and society. He points out antiscientific attitudes embedded in popular religion that are being used to suppress scientific results on issues of global importance, such as overpopulation and environmental degradation. When religion fosters a disrespect for science, it threatens the generations of humanity that will follow ours.
This thorough and hard-hitting critique is must reading for anyone interested in the interaction between religion and science.
To appear in April 2012
No reputable physicist or cosmologist has disputed this book.
Response to Edgar Andrews Who Made God.