God: The Failed Hypothesis: How
Science Shows That God Does Not
Exist by Victor J. Stenger
God Need Not Apply!
Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have
been largely confined to philosophy and theology. In the meantime,
science has sat on the sidelines and quietly watched this game of words
march up and down the field. 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. Physicist Victor J.
Stenger 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.
Personal Review: God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science
Shows That God Does Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger
When French mathematician and astronomer Pierre Laplace was asked
why his new book on astronomy made no mention of God, he is said to
have replied, "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là"-- "I have had
no need of that hypothesis." Now Victor Stenger has given us an
exceedingly eye-opening book-length expansion upon that concept--that
the purported existence of God is an hypothesis which does not help in
any way to explain the universe we see around us and for which there is
no need whatever, when the natural observations of science explain the
world quite nicely.
Richard Dawkins has long since argued successfully that since a universe
with a creative, intercessional, propitiatory God would be a very different
universe from one without such an entity, the notion of God is an
hypothesis that requires testing and verification by the methods of science
and logic just like any other hypothesis that makes claims about the nature
of the world. Victor Stenger has taken up that challenge in a book that
brings to bear all the penetrating light of the scientific method. Not
surprisingly to those of us who have never seen any reason to credit the
notion of God, the hypothesis fails. The universe looks precisely as it
should under the realization that there is no God: "[T]he reason I deem the
God hypothesis to have failed is precisely because no physical
phenomena have been reliably shown to exist that require us to go beyond
natural explanations."
Time and again throughout the book, Stenger presents tightly reasoned yet
highly readable arguments to the effect that if the God hypothesis were
true, there definitely should be multitudinous kinds of evidence that in fact
we find utterly lacking. Hypotheses, when they are true, leave observable
effects that false hypotheses do not leave. This approach proves to be
fatal to the God hypothesis, as Stenger demonstrates repeatedly from
various angles
Taking up the notion of intelligent design, for example, he shows that the
universe as we actually see it looks precisely as it should in the absence of
a designer, its spontaneous development being quite evident. Likewise,
examining the quaint notion that a God exists who is omniscient,
omnipotent, and omni-benevolent, Stenger has no difficulty arguing that,
on the contrary, the world looks precisely as it should when such a
creature is entirely imaginary. "The universe," he wryly observes, "is not
congenial to human life."

Indeed the whole notion of God is not only foolish but harmful to
humankind: "By ridding the world of God, science helps us to control our
own lives rather than submitting them to the arbitrary authority of priests
and kings who justify their acts by divine will." Needless to say, the
religion-inspired atrocities of 9-11 have taught us very clearly that
allegiance to fictional gods is not something the world can any longer
afford.
Everyone should read this. Everyone.
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