Victor J. Stenger Quotes

I have characterized Ross as exemplifying an extreme position among theistic scientists. However, he is not so extreme as to promote the scientifically unsound notions of the young-Earth creationists and other anti-evolutionists ... They are so far off the scale that their scientific claims need not be taken seriously. Their distortions and misrepresentations of the scientific facts are not consistent with their self-righteous claims of acting to protect all that is good and moral.

A scenario is suggested by which the universe and its laws could have arisen naturally from nothing. Current cosmology suggests that no laws of physics were violated in bringing the universe into existence. The laws of physics themselves are shown to correspond to what one would expect if the universe appeared from nothing. There is something rather than nothing because something is more stable.

Fifteen years of skepticism has done more for me than 20 years of force-fed religion and 30 years of indifference in between.

The existence of matter and energy in the universe did not require the violation of energy conservation at the assumed creation. In fact, the data strongly support the hypothesis that no such miracle occurred. If we regard such a miracle as predicted by the creator hypothesis, then the prediction is not confirmed.

Unlike those theists who at least pay lip service to science and scientific method, Johnson is out to convict science of fraud in the court of public opinion.

Debating is not an honest intellectual exercise. It's like a trial in which the goal is not to get to the truth but to win.

The God of the gaps argument for God fails when a plausible scientific account for a gap in current knowledge can be given. I do not dispute that the exact nature of the origin of the universe remains a gap in scientific knowledge. But I deny that we are bereft of any conceivable way to account for that origin scientifically.

Selling eternal life is an unbeatable business, with no customers ever asking for their money back after the goods are not delivered.

The claim that the universe *began* with the big bang has no basis in current physical and cosmological knowledge. The observations confirming the big bang do not rule out the possibility of a prior universe.

Reality is what kicks back when you kick it. This is just what physicists do with their particle accelerators. We kick reality and feel it kick back. From the intensity and duration of thousands of those kicks over many years, we have formed a coherent theory of matter and forces, called the standard model, that currently agrees with all observations.

Scientists have practical reasons for wishing that religion and science be kept separate. They can see nothing but trouble ... if they venture into the deeply divisive issue of religion - especially when their results tend to support a highly unpopular, atheistic conclusion.

We have yet to encounter an observable astronomical phenomenon that require a supernatural element to be added to a model in order to describe the even ... Observations in cosmology look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.

Is there a place in a church where you leave your brains when you enter?

Saying the universe is eternal simply is saying that it has no beginning or end, not that it had a beginning an infinite time ago

The so-called mysteries of quantum mechanics are in its philosophical interpretation, not in its mathematics.

Alternative explanations are always welcome in science, if they are better and explain more. Alternative explanations that explain nothing are not welcome ... Note how science changed those beliefs when new data became available. Religions stick to the same ancient beliefs regardless of the data.

Science flies men to the moon, religion flies men into buildings.

The argument from design stands or falls on whether it can be demonstrated that some aspect of the universe such as its origin or biological life could not have come about naturally. The burden of proof is ... on the supernaturalist to demonstrate that something from outside nature must be introduced to explain the data.

But, as we have seen, movement does not require a mover, and modern quantum mechanics has shown that not all effects require a cause. And even if they did, why would the Prime Mover need to be a supernatural anthropomorphic deity such as the Judeo - Christian God? Why could it not just as well be the material universe itself?

In fact, current cosmological observations indicate that the average density of matter and energy in the universe is equal, within measurement errors, to the critical density for which the total energy of the universe was exactly zero at the beginning.

As Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, "The answer to the ancient question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' would then be that 'nothing' is unstable." ... In short, the natural state of affairs is something rather than nothing. An empty universe requires supernatural intervention
not a full one. Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.

The most fundamental laws of physics are not restrictions on the behaviour of matter. Rather, they are restrictions on the way physicists may describe that behaviour.

The origin and the operation of the universe do not require any violations of the laws of physics.

While science continually uncovers new mysteries, it has removed much of what was once regarded as deeply mysterious. Although we certainly do not know the exact nature of every component of the universe, the basic principles of physics seem to apply out to the farthest horizon visible to us today.

The belief in supernatural forces remains to this day a yoke on the neck of humanity, but at least Thales made it possible, for those of us who wish it, to be free of that yoke.

With pantheism ... the deity is associated with the order of nature or the universe itself ... when modern scientists such as Einstein and Stephen Hawking mention 'God' in their writing, this is what they seem to mean: that God is Nature.

The battle over the validity of evolution has been publicly posed as a scientific one. However, you will find little sign of it in scientific journals, where such quarrels as exist are over details, not the basic concept ... Evolution has proved so useful as a paradigm for the origin and structure of life that it constitutes the foundation of the sciences of biology and medicine.

The myth of quantum consciousness sits well with many whose egos have made it impossible for them to accept the insignificant place science perceives for humanity, as modern instruments probe the farthest reaches of space and time. ... quantum consciousness has about as much substance as the aether from which it is composed. Early in this century, quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity destroyed the notion of a holistic universe that had seemed within the realm of possibility in the century just past. First, Einstein did away with the aether, shattering the doctrine that we all move about inside a universal, cosmic fluid whose excitations connect us simultaneously to one another and to the rest of the universe. Second, Einstein and other physicists proved that matter and light were composed of particles, wiping away the notion of universal continuity. Atomic theory and quantum mechanics demonstrated that everything, even space and time, exists in discrete bits – quanta. To turn this around and say that twentieth century physics initiated some new holistic view of the universe is a complete misrepresentation of what actually took place. ... The myth of quantum consciousness should take its place along with gods, unicorns, and dragons as yet another product of the fantasies of people unwilling to accept what science, reason, and their own eyes tell them about the world.

People want to be at the center of the Universe ... and they're going to flock to anybody who tells them that.

However, it wouldn't matter much whether the universe is 13.7 billion years old, or 12.7 or 14.7, so it is hardly fine-tuned. If the universe were only 1.37 billion years old, then life on Earth or elsewhere would not yet have formed; but it might eventually. If the universe were 137 billion years old, life may have long ago died away; but it still could have happened. Once again, the apologists' blinkered perspective causes them to look at our current universe and assume that this is the only universe that could have life, and that carbon-based life is the only possible form of life.

Those who use the Bible as a reference for moral behavior are simply cherry-picking those teachings, such as the Golden Rule, that they have independently decided are moral for other reasons, while ignoring those teachings with which they disagree.

A common refrain among theoretical physicists is that the fields of quantum field theory are the "real" entities while the particles they represent are images like the shadows in Plato's cave. As one who did experimental particle physics for forty years before retiring in 2000, I say, "Wait a minute!" No one has ever measured a quantum field, or even a classical electric, magnetic, or gravitational field. No one has ever measured a wavicle, the term used to describe the so-called wavelike properties of a particle. You always measure localized particles. The interference patterns you observe in sending light through slits are not seen in the measurements of individual photons, just in the statistical distributions of an ensemble of many photons. To me, it is the particle that comes closest to reality. But then, I cannot prove it is real either.

The complex order we now observe [in the universe] could *not* have been the result of any initial design built into the universe at the so-called creation. The universe preserves no record of what went on before the big bang. The Creator, if he existed, left no imprint. Thus he might as well have been nonexistent.

To most theistic believers, human life can have no meaning in a universe without God. Quite sincerely, and with understandable yearning for a meaning to their existence, they reject the possibility of no God. In their minds, only a purposeful universe based on God is possible and science can do nothing else but support thistruth.

Rather than being handed down from above, like the Ten Commandments, they [the laws of physics] look exactly as they should look if they were not handed down from anywhere ... they follow from the very lack of structure at the earliest moment.

Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000years ago.

The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent.

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.