Victor
J. Stenger
Adjunct
Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado
Professor
Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy, University of Hawaii (retired in
2000)
Research
Fellow, Center for Inquiry - Transnational CFI
Fellow
of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry CSI
Please note that I now live
in Lafayette, Colorado. If you wish a snail mail address or phone
number, please contact me first by email at
<vic.stenger#comcast.net>.
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Scheduled 2009
appearances by Vic Stenger
Reviews
of Books by Vic Stenger.
See also my special
page on Amazon.com which has links to all my books and reviews on
their web site.
The material presented on these pages written by Victor J.
Stenger is copyrighted. Already published items
may be quoted or copied for non-commercial purposes with proper
credit under usual copyright laws. Only quote or copy from the
published version since what is linked
here may not correspond exactly to the final, offical document unless
the link is directly to the publication. Draft
material presented for comments is not final and should not be copied,
quoted, or distributed. When in doubt, contact the author by email.
Closer
to Truth TV Interviews by Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Closer to Truth Home Go
here for links to whole series and dozens of einterviews with top
scientists.
Why
is Science & Theology So Intriguing? These three are his
interviews with me.
Arguing
God from Natrual Theology?
Fallacies
on Proving God Exists?
We'd be better off without religion
Nationally televised debate in Australia, August 19, 2008. Six
speakers.
intelligence2
The
New Atheism
Taking a Stand for Science and Reason
Go here for more information.
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.
More
information.
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.
More
information.
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
More
information
New Project
in
the Works
The
Fallacy of Fine-Tuning
How
the Universe is Not Designed for Humanity
(Titles tentative)
Go here for more information. The draft
chapters require a password.
2007 Book
The
Comprehensible Cosmos
Where Do
The Laws of Physics Come From?
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.
Reality
Check
Thoughts and Matter
Reality Check
column in Skeptical Briefs, Vol. 19, No. 4
Dec 2009.
For comment only. Do not quote, copy, or distribute.
To read earlier columns, go here.
A Scenario for a Natural Origin of Our
Universe
Using a Mathematical Model Based on
Established Physics and Cosmology
Published in Philo Vol.
9, No. 2, Fall-Winter 2006. pp. 93-102.
A mathematical model of the natural origin
of our universe is presented.
The model is based only on the well-established theories of general
relativity and quantum mechanics. It is not unique and no claim is
being made that this is actually how the universe came about. It is
presented to counter the assertion that science cannot provide any
plausible explanation for the origin of the universe.
Erratum: In equation 19 the
range of the variable should be 0 < a < a0 and the exponent
should be negative.
Also available on arXiv
arXiv:0710.3137 [pdf]
Previously
Published
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)
GENERAL
TOPICS
- Physics and Metaphysics.
Information
on
my 1995 book The Unconscious Quantum:
Metaphysics
in Modern Physics and Cosmology can be found here, along
with essays and articles on quantum mysticism and quackery.
- Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics.
You can
find links here, including Super-Kamiokande
here and 1998 results from this experiment including the first
observation
that neutrinos have mass. I may have been the first one to suggest in print, in
1980, the technique that was eventually used. This page conains a link
to my paper.
- The Pierre Auger Observatory.
A second facility is to be built near Lamar, Colorado.
- Cosmology and Cosmythology.
Information
on my 1988 book Not By Design: The Origin
of
the Universe is located here along with articles,
essays,
and reviews on cosmology, creation ex nihilo.
- Anthropics. Articles
on
the
fine-tuning arguments and anthropic principle. You can create your own
universe here!
- Physics and Psychics, the Paranormal.
Information
on my 1990 book Physics and Psychics: The
Search
for a World Beyond the Senses can be found here, along
with
essays and other information on paranormal phenomena. Also look here
for
my Reality Check columns in Skeptical
Briefs.
- Science and Religion. Essays
and
other
information on connections between science and religion. See also How
to Answer Theist Arguments. This
was a seminar series for atheists and freethinkers held in
Denver
and Colorado Springs in early 2002. Go here to read the
theist-antitheist
dialogues that formed the basis of the seminars.
- Alternative
Medicine. Articles
I have written that relate to alternative medicine and quackery and
links
to other pages on the subject.
The
Hawaii
Rational Inquirer
News and commentary on issues of interest to the academic community at
the University of Hawaii as part of the local, national, and
international
academic communities. This was produced when I was at the University of
Hawaii.
This newsletter is no longer being
produced.
Link
to archive.
Recommended
links:
If you want to know a little more about me, go
here for a short biography. If you want to see my complete CV, go
here (pdf). To see what I look like now, go here. To see what I looked like in
1982,
finishing the Honolulu Marathon,
go here. On
the beach in Hawaii, December 2006.
Email: <vic.stenger#comcast.net>.
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