God the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist [Hardcover]

This is an outstanding book. Victor Stenger, a Professor of both Physics and Astronomy, convincingly argues against the existence of God (by which he means the Judea-Christian version, although most of the book could equally apply to the interpretations of other religions such as Islam etc) by examining a wide variety of scientific evidence. In my view Stenger succeeds in disproving God beyond a level of reasonable doubt. Certain high profile atheists (Richard Dawkins and Same Harris, to name but two) have already written bestsellers on this subject, and I would evaluate Stenger's work as one that fully deserves the same level of success and recognition.

The structure of the book is roughly as follows:

In the first chapter, Stenger lucidly explains the scientific method and what makes it such a potent investigative tool. This is important because many people have no real understanding of these concepts. He also refutes the widely held (at least, by religious people) view that science has nothing to say about religion. This is a very important point, which sets the foundation for the rest of the book.

Stenger also deals with another common misconception, which is that scientists are somehow opposed to, or in denial of the discovery of any supernatural forces, whether religious, psychic, or anything else which violates the natural laws as they are currently understood. In reality the only reason why most scientists do not acknowledge the evidence of such things is because the evidence does not exist.

In the remainder of the book, Stenger goes on to assess the objective evidence for and against the God hypothesis by investigating a plethora of scientific and historical research. He covers everything from biblical prophecies to the illusion of design to prayer experiments and much more. All of this research could very well have produced compelling evidence for God, but none of it has. Stenger logically concludes that the evidence looks exactly the way we would expect it to look in the absence of God.

As a mild criticism, I found that certain topics could have been covered in a bit more detail. On the other hand, some of these issues could easily form the subject of entire books, and so it would have been almost impossible to discuss them in full detail within just a single chapter. Overall I think the author has penetrated to the heart of most of the important issues, and there are plenty of references for those who which to carry out further reading.

Chapters 4 and 5 (entitled Cosmic Evidence and The Uncongenial Universe) deserve a special mention. These two chapters are the undisputed gems of the book, in my opinion. Perhaps this is not so surprising given Stenger's expertise in physics and astronomy. For me personally, the knowledge I gained from these two chapters was easily worth the price of book by itself, and it was an absolute joy to have my eyes opened to some of the mind-boggling secrets of the universe that have been yielded by the investigative efforts of physicists and astronomers. Things do get a little hard to follow at times, but this is pretty much unavoidable for such a complex subject, and overall I think that Stenger does a great job of making it understandable to the lay reader. I won't give too much away, but rest assured that pro-god arguments like "how can something come from nothing?" (with reference to the 'big bang') and "how do you explain the fine-tuning of the universe" are comprehensively dismantled.

To conclude, I would strongly recommend this book for:

- Atheists wishing to learn about how science can be used to disprove God beyond a reasonable doubt.

- People who are vaguely religious/agnostic who wish to learn about the objective evidence for and against a supreme being.

- Religious people who:

a) wish to strengthen their faith by familiarising themselves with arguments for the opposing viewpoint, and/or

b) are brave enough to admit that they could be wrong, and wish to assess the objective evidence for and against God.

In a nutshell, I think that Victor Stenger has done a wonderful job with this book. I have no hesitation in awarding it five stars - with six stars for chapters 4 and 5!

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]

"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.