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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.

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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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 possibilities for a god to exist in every conceivable form. And, I am not evaluating all the theological and philosophical arguments for or against God. I am simply evaluating the scientific arguments and claimed scientific evidence for a deity according to the same criteria that science applies to any extraordinary claim. I conclude that, so far, they fail to meet the test.

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 supernatural anthropomorphic deity such as the Judaeo-Christian God? Why could it not just as well be the material universe itself?

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

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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 more than matter is required for this thing you call self-awareness, which you have not defined, then you have the burden of showing why.

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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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 listened eagerly when the priests promised them everlasting life in paradise, where they would be reunited with their departed love ones, but this was not enough when the suffering and guilt were unbearable. The parish priests did their best and I fault them little. They operated within a framework developed over centuries that would not have survived this long if it did not give people something they wanted, no matter how insufficient.... My father ... remained a Catholic and always expressed belief in God. He did not argue with me about my views - although he and other older relatives often told me to keep my mouth shut... While they succeeded in keeping me from expressing my thoughts too openly, they had no effect on those thoughts. As long as I kept my mouth shut, they left me alone.

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

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

On his list, AVOID_L, November 5, 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 because I feared damnation.

Has Science Found God? Has Science Found God? - Preface, 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 created, namely God, then that entity can just as well be the universe itself. Indeed, this is a more economical possibility, not requiring the additional hypothesis of a supernatural power outside the universe.... To creationists, it is not a matter of logic anyway, but common sense. They see no way that the universe could have just happened, without intent. "How can something come from nothing?" they continue to ask, never wondering how God came from nothing.

Has Science Found God? - draft: 2001.

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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 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 6,000 years ago.

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 prospect that evolution by natural selection, at least as a broad mechanism, will be overthrown in the future is about as likely as the prospect of finding out some day that the Earth is really flat. Unfortunately, those who regard these scientific facts as a threat to faith have chosen to distort and misrepresent them to the public.

Has Science Found God? - draft: 2001.

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