God: The Failed Hypothesis : how Science Shows that God Does Not Exist

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Prometheus Books, 2007 - Religion - 294 pages
Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have been largely confined to philosophy and theology, while science has sat on the sidelines. Despite the fact that science has revolutionized every aspect of human life and greatly clarified our understanding of the world, somehow the notion has arisen that it has nothing to say about the possibility of a supreme being, which much of humanity worships as the source of all reality. This physicist and author contends that, if God exists, some evidence for this existence should be detectable by scientific means, especially considering the central role that God is alleged to play in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans. Treating the traditional God concept, as conventionally presented in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, like any other scientific hypothesis, Stenger examines all of the claims made for God's existence. He considers the latest Intelligent Design arguments as evidence of God's influence in biology. He looks at human behavior for evidence of immaterial souls and the possible effects of prayer. He discusses the findings of physics and astronomy in weighing the suggestions that the universe is the work of a creator and that humans are God's special creation. After evaluating all the scientific evidence, Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God.

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Contents

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About the author (2007)

Victor J. Stenger was born on January 29, 1935. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Newark College of Engineering (now New Jersey Institute of Technology) in 1956, a Master of Science degree in physics from UCLA in 1959, and a Ph.D. in physics in 1963. He worked as an elementary particle physicist for numerous years. He also was a professor at the University of Colorado and the University of Hawaii. He was an advocate against psychics, pseudoscience and religion. During his lifetime, he wrote 13 books including Not By Design: The Origin of the Universe; Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses; God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist; God and the Folly of Faith: The Fundamental Incompatibility of Religion; God and the Atom: From Democritus to the Higgs Boson; and God and the Multiverse: Humanity's Expanding View of the Universe. He died of an aneurysm on August 27, 2014 at the age of 79.

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