Victor John Stenger Quotes

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

Victor John Stenger

On his list, AVOID_L, November 5, 2001.

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And, yet again, because I can predict the line of criticism that this book will generate, I need to make it clear up-front that I am not claiming that the absence of evidence eliminates all...

Victor John Stenger

On life growing up in New Jersey - Has Science Found God? - draft: 2001.

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Most people in Bayonne, like folks in similar towns across the country, had little education and could neither verbalize nor intellectualize their problems very well. They just suffered them. They...

Victor John Stenger

On life growing up in New Jersey - Has Science Found God? - draft: 2001.

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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...

Victor John Stenger

Discussing Aquinas's adaptation of Aristotle's ideas as "proof" of the existence of God, - Physics and Psychics - 1990.

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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.

Victor John Stenger

Physics and Psychics - 1990 - Thales, 625?-546? BCE was a Greek philosopher who was the first to posit a godless universe that runs entirely on natural laws.

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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...

Victor John Stenger

Has Science Found God?- Preface, draft: 2001.

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Define self-awareness and tell me what it is about it that requires something more than a material explanation. I do not accept the burden of explaining all phenomena, real or imagined. If you think...

Victor John Stenger

Responding to the question, "What is your preferred parsimonious explanation for the fact of self-awareness? Most of the hypotheses offered to explain consciousness seem to me to fail the parsimony test. None seems satisfactory. How oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, sodium, chlorine, fluorine, magnesium, iron, manganese, silicon, iodine, and a few other trace elements ever interact to become self-aware seems to me the most important question in all of the debates about the nature of creation." On his list, AVOID_L, - October 18, 2001.

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It was not that I thought I was smarter. I had simply explored science and found what seemed to me a far more powerful authority. And, I did not steal or murder because I thought they were wrong, nor...

Victor John Stenger

Has Science Found God? Has Science Found God? - Preface, draft: 2001.

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In short, evolution is as close to being a scientific fact as is possible for any theory, given that science is open-ended and no one can predict with certainty what may change in the future. The...

Victor John Stenger

Has Science Found God? - draft: 2001.

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The argument from design rests on the notion that everything, but God, must come from something. However, once you agree that it is logically possible for an entity to exist that was not itself...

Victor John Stenger

Has Science Found God? - draft: 2001.

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