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Read Passages from this book
God: The Failed Hypothesis
at the Rational Atheist Book Club

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Several books have been released recently that question the very existence of God. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is one, Victor Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis is another. For a book that makes such a confident–and what some would call courageous–claim, I was expecting a rather thick tome. Something that might be difficult to get through. Something that might sit on my shelf, perhaps next to the Bible, collecting dust. I was surprised by the slim appearance and reminded myself, “Never judge a book by its cover...or its length.” What followed in ten chapters and less than three hundred pages, was a concise, succinct account of how science shows that God does not exist. In this book, God is defined as the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, and Stenger presents various attributes for this God, along with the objections from science.Where his arguments seem simplistic, he presents the reader with multiple resources for further information.

There are many claims from both the realms of science and religion that science has nothing to say about God. If theists believed that science should have nothing to say about God, then why do they present scientific data for evidence of God? And considering that we use science in almost all aspects of our lives, not to apply it to the God hypothesis would be intellectually dishonest. Stenger tells us that a god who is as important as the God of the Judeo, Christian and Islamic traditions should exhibit some sort of objective evidence in the natural world. There are several theists who would say that absence of evidence is not evidence for absence. We could develop an infinite amount of concepts in which we would be “atheistic.” There is no evidence for unicorns and most people don't believe in them. The lack of evidence for unicorns does not rule out their existence, but believing in unicorns would be considered delusional.

We may not be able to put God under a microscope, but there are several attributes of God that we should be able to test, find empirical evidence for and use to make predictions about the natural world. “While failure to pass a required test is sufficient to falsify a model, the passing of the test is not sufficient to verify the model.” We can apply this to each of the attributes of the God model presented in the book. Science is not always about direct evidence. It is often about making inferences and coming to consilient conclusions. We can't see a black hole, but we can observe how it affects stars and infer that it is there. In looking at the failed attributes of the God model, we can infer that he is not there.

The main attributes tested by Stenger in this fantastic work are a God as designer, a God as creator of the universe and all its natural laws, a God who holds humanity as its most important creation, a God who has given us each an everlasting soul, a God who responds to prayer, and a God who should be used as a model for morality. Stenger approaches these attributes directly, providing us with a naturalistic world-view that will leave the scientific-minded among the general population breathless.

A very common argument for the evidence of God, is that of design. Theists urge us to look at creation and its inherent design. We are told that our world and its inhabitants are too complex to have come about by accident. Stenger presents us with various arguments from DNA, evolution and self-organization and concludes that “the whole realm of scientific observations lead to the same conclusion: the universe does not looked designed.”

Belief in ghosts, ESP, out-of-body experiences, the power of prayer, the existence of souls etc., runs rampant in our society. In God: The Failed Hypothesis, we learn that there is no credible evidence for a supernatural existence and it shows that many of these experiences can be attributed for by processes in the brain. There have been numerous experiments conducted since the mid-nineteeth century that have attempted to prove the existence for ESP or psychic phenomena, and none of the results have been convincing. For one hundred and fifty years, the bulk of the scientific community have not presented as fact any such anomaly.

As a particle physicist, Stenger aptly turns to search for evidence for a creator-God in the Cosmos. Here he tackles four arguments presented from theism: the claim that the first and second laws of thermodynamics were violated, why there is something rather than nothing, and the claim that our universe is “fine-tuned” just for us.

The first law of thermodynamics is a law about the conservation of energy. Some theists will posit that energy was created at the beginning of the universe, thus violating this law. Stenger shows us that “energy can be converted from one type to another as long as the total for a closed system remains fixed. “Remarkably, the total energy of the universe appears to be zero,” showing that there was no violation of the first law of thermodynamics.

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy is increasing. Some theists will claim that the universe was initially in a state of total chaos and that order was introduced miraculously and that this observation proves the existence of a creator-God. However, Stenger turns this belief on it's head by showing that the “entropy was maximal” at the start of the universe. He concludes that “the universe began with no structure. It has structure today consistent with the fact that its entropy is no longer maximal,” due to the fact of an expanding universe. “Since the universe is expanding, the maximum entropy increases faster than the actual entropy leaving increasing room for order to form without violating the second law of thermodynamics.”

Perhaps most brilliant was the approach to why there is something rather than nothing. Stenger says, “Assuming we can define 'nothing, ' why should nothing be a more natural state of affairs than something? In fact, we can give plausible scientific reason based on our best current knowledge of physics and cosmology that something is more natural than nothing...many simple systems of particles are unstable, that is, have limited lifetimes as they undergo spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures of lower energy. Since 'nothing' is as simple as it gets, we cannot expect it to be very stable. It would likely undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something more complicated, like a universe containing matter.”

The fine-tuning, or anthropic principle, is my least favorite theistic argument. Not that I find it the most compelling, just that I find it the most boring. Stenger makes many points against this argument, but the one I like the most is his observation that if a “perfect God...designed [the universe] for life...he could have made it a lot easier for life to evolve.” He also points out that the parameters of the laws of our universe are interrelated and that scientists have been able to come up with plausible existences when these parameters are changed simultaneously.

Along with the arguments that are directly from the realm of science, Stenger tackles many claims that are usually left to philosophy and theology: “revelations” in the scriptures, morality,evil, the “comforts” of religion and philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God. He comes to many scientific conclusions in this book, most of which can be understood by a general audience. He shows us that the design we see is an illusion, that the universe was not created, that we cannot possibly get our morals from the God of the Bible and other various holy texts, that the way that everything currently exists, is the way we would expect it to exist if there were no God.

In every chapter you find direct claims substantiated by evidence then restated in light of the evidence. And every chapter includes extensive notes for specific claims and resources for further information on those specific points. The book also includes an extensive bibliography that will keep anyone busy for a long, long time. While I came away from The God Delusion hungry for more, God: The Failed Hypothesis left me feeling well-fed and ready for dessert.