God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist | Victor J. Stenger

God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist | Victor J. Stenger | The best of recent atheist books, but you gotta know some science

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God: The Failed Hy...

	God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist Victor J. Stenger Prometheus Books, 2008 - 310 pages average customer review:based on 145 reviews view larger image
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In many ways the best of the "atheistic" books recently published

"The thesis of this book is that the supernatural hypothesis of God is testable, verifiable, and falsifiable by the established methods of science." --from page 29

"...I will...argue that...science has advanced sufficiently to be able to make a definitive statement on the existence or nonexistence of a God having the attributes that are traditionally associated with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God." --from page 11

These statements are a great leap forward from the fairly recent belief (I'm thinking of the late, great Stephen Jay Gould, for example) that we ought to render unto science things belonging to science and unto religion things belonging to religion. But what Professor Stenger is saying is that we can look at religion in a scientific sense and decide which aspects of it are true and which are false. In particular Stenger looks at the God of Abraham and fulfills the promise of the subtitle: "How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist." Note that it is only the personal God of the three Middle Eastern religions that he specifically lays to rest. The Ineffable God of the Vedas is presumably still standing, as are many other gods who are not defined as personal and possessing the three O's: omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience. An interesting book including arguments against the existence of some other gods is The Impossibility of God (2003) by Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier (cited by Stenger; see my review at Amazon).

Stenger's is a step-by-step consideration of the arguments and the "evidence" for God's existence, followed by a demonstration that the arguments are faulty and/or the evidence is lacking. For example, he shows how the evil in the world is inconsistent with a God possessing the three O's; he shows how all the endless stories of miracles and such are easily explained by means not requiring an intervening deity; he (as many others have) demolishes the argument from design; he shows how morality has nothing to do with God or religion, that it is something humans naturally have, and that in fact, followers of especially Islam and Christianity, are less moral by most standards than are unbelievers.

The God of the Old Testament is exposed as ruthless and evil; Stenger even refers to the so-called "hidden" God (that is, hidden from nonbelievers) of evangelical Christians as a "hideous God." His point is that by staying hidden from nonbelievers this God (cf. the God of John Calvin) effectively makes certain that most people will spend an eternity in hell, people such as "Mahatma Gandhi...along with the six million Jews killed by Hitler and billions of others who died without accepting Jesus." It is interesting that Stenger allows that such a god could exist, but "I personally want nothing to do with him." (pp. 239-240)

As significant and important as showing that God is a hypothesis that has failed is, I think some other aspects of this fascinating book are what make it such an important read. I learned that a good answer to the eternal question (and one of my favorites) "Why is there something rather than nothing?" can be answered by "nothing is unstable" (Frank Wilczek) or, to put it another way, it is impossible for there to be nothing but nothing. (pp. 132-133)

I also discovered that the universe did not necessarily begin with the Big Bang, that events do not necessarily have causes, and that "even if the universe does not have a mathematically infinite number of events in the past, it still need not have a beginning." Additionally (quoting philosopher Keith Parsons), "To say the universe is infinitely old is to say that it had no beginning--not a beginning that was infinitely long ago." Here Stenger makes a nice distinction between the infinite of mathematics and the infinite of physics. He writes, "Physics is counting. In physics, time is simply the count of ticks on a clock. You can count backward as well as forward. Counting forward you can get a very big but never mathematically infinite positive number and time 'never ends.' Counting backward you can get a very big but never mathematically infinite negative number and time 'never begins.'" (pp. 123-125) The salient point, as Georg Cantor made clear, is that infinity is a mathematical concept and not a number. These points are brought to refute the claim that the universe must have had a beginning and therefore a creator God.

Stenger even brings entropy into the picture as an argument against the universe being created. He notes "If the universe were created, then it should have possessed some degree of order at the creation...." But according to Big Bang theory the initial state of the universe after the Planck time was one of high entropy or "total chaos." He then calls in "the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy or disorder of a closed system must remain constant or increase with time." So far it sounds like this is good argument (as it previously might have been) for God the Creator to have injected order into the cosmos since we clearly have order today. But then Stenger shows that because the universe is expanding, the order we see here on earth and elsewhere doesn't violate the second law because "maximum entropy...increases faster than the actual total entropy...." (pp. 117-119)

I have read and reviewed in recent months The God Delusion (2006) by Richard Dawkins; Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006) by Daniel C. Dennett; and The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (2004, 2005) by Sam Harris. While all three are excellent books and sorely needed in this time of attempted evangelical takeover of our culture and government, none of them is as closely and convincingly argued as is this book.

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The best of recent atheist books, but you gotta know some science

This book was actually one of the best I've read in a while. I still don't think it would convince fundamentalists, but then, nothing would convince those people. I've read all of the other "neo-atheist" tracts, and, while interesting, none could easily convince even a person on the theistic fence. Both The God Delusion and God is Not Great have good information, but the language is so hyperbolic that I'm sure Dawkins and Hitchens could count their new proselytes on one hand. Breaking the Spell is just too high-brow for those without a degree in philosophy. Atheist Universe is a LOT better in tone, though it was written by an amateur, so he makes some mistakes about basic science (and even proposes a somewhat silly theory of eternally existing mass-energy). Stenger's book suffers neither from brash diction nor technical error. That he gets the science right is to be expected: He's a noted physicist and astronomer at the University of Hawaii (where they have the fancy Mauna Kea observatories), as well as adjunct professor of philosophy at UC Boulder.

Most atheist books focus on solely philosophical or historical arguments against the existence of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. Stenger focuses on science arguments. He chastises the Gouldian "non-overlapping magisteria" attitude scientists use to keep hands off religion. He correctly notes that the Christian concept of God contains testable and potentially falsifiable attributes: the existence of a soul, the efficacy of prayer, the possibility of miracles, human/deity intercommunication, a heavenly source of human morality, and a slew of other things. As you might guess, after running through the evidence, he concludes that there is no scientific evidence a soul exists, no evidence prayer works, no scientifically documented events that cannot be explained through the natural laws, no evidence of human/deity communication, and the existence of morality can be entirely explained by gene-culture evolution. He does go through some historical and philosophical arguments, which give the book a well-rounded feel.

Stenger is also careful to note that he IS NOT disproving the existence of all conceivable gods, just the Judeo-Christian-Islamic conception of God, as traditionally envisaged. So, you sophisticated theists, pantheists, and deists out there need not worry.

While Stenger does a great job distilling modern physics into digestible language, I confess that the only reason I understood what he was talking about was because I'm sort of a science junkie. I highly recommend this book for more science-minded folks who are unsure about the whole God thing.

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complicated but still enjoyable

it was not as fun to read as richard dawkins' "the god delusion", but the author wrote of many powerful points and it was still a good read.

Entertaining but probably superfluous

I have been an atheist from the age of six, so my Weltanschauung should reasonably have taken shape by now. Nevertheless, I like to learn about the opinion of others on this subject, especially when it is the opinion of an American, as in the US atheism seems to be more an issue than in my country, the Netherlands.
Contrary to common belief, however, atheism is not common practice in the Netherlands. Most people here who do not believe in God, do believe in `something', a growing movement that is by some people called `ietsisme', litterally `somethingism'.

Victor J. Stenger is a real atheist, a rare species in the US. In his book he `shows' that, scientifically spoken, God cannot exist. Although his arguments are obvious to me, these will not be convincing to believers, not even to creationists. To religious people, arguments about whether or not God exists do not matter. Religious people simply believe. From this viewpoint, this book is probably superfluous.

However, it was fun reading it.

Rob van der Staaij

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