Victor J. Stenger Quotes & Sayings

The God of the gaps argument for God fails when a plausible scientific account for a gap in current knowledge can be given. I do not dispute that the exact nature of the origin of the universe remains a gap in scientific knowledge. But I deny that we are bereft of any conceivable way to account for that origin scientifically. — Victor J. Stenger

While science continually uncovers new mysteries, it has removed much of what was once regarded as deeply mysterious. Although we certainly do not know the exact nature of every component of the universe, the basic principles of physics seem to apply out to the farthest horizon visible to us today. — Victor J. Stenger

Infinity ... is used in physics simply as a shorthand for a very big number. — Victor J. Stenger

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 6,000years ago. — Victor J. Stenger

Just because quantum mechanics is weird does not mean that everything that is weird is quantum mechanics. — Victor J. Stenger

All great discoveries in experimental physics have been due to the intuition of men who made free use of models, which were for them not products of the imagination but representatives of real things.
Max Born (1953) — Victor J. Stenger

As Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, "The answer to the ancient question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' would then be that 'nothing' is unstable." ... In short, the natural state of affairs is something rather than nothing. An empty universe requires supernatural intervention
not a full one. Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God. — Victor J. Stenger

Until recent times, absence of evidence for his [Jehovah's] existence has not been sufficient to rule him out. However, we now have enough knowledge that we can identify many places where there should be evidence, but there is not. The absence of that evidence allows us to rule out the existence of this God beyond a reasonable doubt. — Victor J. Stenger

People want to be at the center of the Universe ... and they're going to flock to anybody who tells them that. — Victor J. Stenger

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. — Victor J. Stenger

The problem is that people think faith is something to be admired. In fact, faith means you believe in something for which you have no evidence. — Victor J. Stenger

Nature is capable of building complex structures by processes of self-organization; simplicity begets complexity. — Victor J. Stenger

A scenario is suggested by which the universe and its laws could have arisen naturally from nothing. Current cosmology suggests that no laws of physics were violated in bringing the universe into existence. The laws of physics themselves are shown to correspond to what one would expect if the universe appeared from nothing. There is something rather than nothing because something is more stable. — Victor J. Stenger

When people start using science to argue for their specific beliefs and delusions, to try to claim that they're supported by science, then scientists at least have to speak up and say, You re welcome to your delusions, but don't say that they're supported by science. — Victor J. Stenger

Those who use the Bible as a reference for moral behavior are simply cherry-picking those teachings, such as the Golden Rule, that they have independently decided are moral for other reasons, while ignoring those teachings with which they disagree. — Victor J. Stenger

Science is not going to change its commitment to the truth. We can only hope religion changes its commitment to nonsense. — Victor J. Stenger

Proof is not required to believe [in a god]. But some sign, some evidence is needed. None exists ... Find some inkling of evidence. There is none. — Victor J. Stenger

Is there a place in a church where you leave your brains when you enter? — Victor J. Stenger

However, it wouldn't matter much whether the universe is 13.7 billion years old, or 12.7 or 14.7, so it is hardly fine-tuned. If the universe were only 1.37 billion years old, then life on Earth or elsewhere would not yet have formed; but it might eventually. If the universe were 137 billion years old, life may have long ago died away; but it still could have happened. Once again, the apologists' blinkered perspective causes them to look at our current universe and assume that this is the only universe that could have life, and that carbon-based life is the only possible form of life. — Victor J. Stenger

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

We have yet to encounter an observable astronomical phenomenon that require a supernatural element to be added to a model in order to describe the even ... Observations in cosmology look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God. — Victor J. Stenger

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings. — Victor J. Stenger

Alternative explanations are always welcome in science, if they are better and explain more. Alternative explanations that explain nothing are not welcome ... Note how science changed those beliefs when new data became available. Religions stick to the same ancient beliefs regardless of the data. — Victor J. Stenger

Selling eternal life is an unbeatable business, with no customers ever asking for their money back after the goods are not delivered. — Victor J. Stenger

The so-called mysteries of quantum mechanics are in its philosophical interpretation, not in its mathematics. — Victor J. Stenger

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. — Victor J. Stenger

In a poll taken in 1998, only 7 percent of the members of the US National Academy of Sciences, the elite of American scientists, said they believed in a personal god. — Victor J. Stenger

In fact, current cosmological observations indicate that the average density of matter and energy in the universe is equal, within measurement errors, to the critical density for which the total energy of the universe was exactly zero at the beginning. — Victor J. Stenger

Unlike those theists who at least pay lip service to science and scientific method, Johnson is out to convict science of fraud in the court of public opinion. — Victor J. Stenger

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 J. Stenger

The argument from design stands or falls on whether it can be demonstrated that some aspect of the universe such as its origin or biological life could not have come about naturally. The burden of proof is ... on the supernaturalist to demonstrate that something from outside nature must be introduced to explain the data. — Victor J. Stenger

Any attempt at understanding humanity must include an explanation of the hold that supernatural belief continues to have on most of the human race. — Victor J. Stenger

To most theistic believers, human life can have no meaning in a universe without God. Quite sincerely, and with understandable yearning for a meaning to their existence, they reject the possibility of no God. In their minds, only a purposeful universe based on God is possible and science can do nothing else but support thistruth. — Victor J. Stenger

A common refrain among theoretical physicists is that the fields of quantum field theory are the "real" entities while the particles they represent are images like the shadows in Plato's cave. As one who did experimental particle physics for forty years before retiring in 2000, I say, "Wait a minute!" No one has ever measured a quantum field, or even a classical electric, magnetic, or gravitational field. No one has ever measured a wavicle, the term used to describe the so-called wavelike properties of a particle. You always measure localized particles. The interference patterns you observe in sending light through slits are not seen in the measurements of individual photons, just in the statistical distributions of an ensemble of many photons. To me, it is the particle that comes closest to reality. But then, I cannot prove it is real either. — Victor J. Stenger

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 Judeo - Christian God? Why could it not just as well be the material universe itself? — Victor J. Stenger

With pantheism ... the deity is associated with the order of nature or the universe itself ... when modern scientists such as Einstein and Stephen Hawking mention 'God' in their writing, this is what they seem to mean: that God is Nature. — Victor J. Stenger

I do not think science has to make any apologies. It looks at the world and tells it like it is. And we all live longer, better lives because of this dispassionate view. Sure, it commands awe and provides inspiration. Still, I would rather be operated on by a surgeon who sees me as an assemblage of atoms than one who lovingly tries to manipulate what he or she imagines are my vital energy fields. — Victor J. Stenger

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, not because I feared damnation. — Victor J. Stenger

Saying the universe is eternal simply is saying that it has no beginning or end, not that it had a beginning an infinite time ago — Victor J. Stenger

Scientific evidence for God's existence is being claimed today by theists, many of whom carry respectable scientific or philosophical credentials. He who is neither a she nor an it supposedly answers prayers and otherwise dramatically affects the outcome of events. If these consequences are as significant as believers say, then the effects should be detectable in properly controlled experiments. — Victor J. Stenger

The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent. — Victor J. Stenger

Scientists have practical reasons for wishing that religion and science be kept separate. They can see nothing but trouble ... if they venture into the deeply divisive issue of religion - especially when their results tend to support a highly unpopular, atheistic conclusion. — Victor J. Stenger

Debating is not an honest intellectual exercise. It's like a trial in which the goal is not to get to the truth but to win. — Victor J. Stenger

Thought, without the data on which to structure that thought, leads nowhere. — Victor J. Stenger

I have characterized Ross as exemplifying an extreme position among theistic scientists. However, he is not so extreme as to promote the scientifically unsound notions of the young-Earth creationists and other anti-evolutionists ... They are so far off the scale that their scientific claims need not be taken seriously. Their distortions and misrepresentations of the scientific facts are not consistent with their self-righteous claims of acting to protect all that is good and moral. — Victor J. Stenger

The origin and the operation of the universe do not require any violations of the laws of physics. — Victor J. Stenger

Rather than being handed down from above, like the Ten Commandments, they [the laws of physics] look exactly as they should look if they were not handed down from anywhere ... they follow from the very lack of structure at the earliest moment. — Victor J. Stenger

The complex order we now observe [in the universe] could *not* have been the result of any initial design built into the universe at the so-called creation. The universe preserves no record of what went on before the big bang. The Creator, if he existed, left no imprint. Thus he might as well have been nonexistent. — Victor J. Stenger

Reality is what kicks back when you kick it. This is just what physicists do with their particle accelerators. We kick reality and feel it kick back. From the intensity and duration of thousands of those kicks over many years, we have formed a coherent theory of matter and forces, called the standard model, that currently agrees with all observations. — Victor J. Stenger

The most fundamental laws of physics are not restrictions on the behaviour of matter. Rather, they are restrictions on the way physicists may describe that behaviour. — Victor J. Stenger

Science flies men to the moon, religion flies men into buildings. — Victor J. Stenger

The battle over the validity of evolution has been publicly posed as a scientific one. However, you will find little sign of it in scientific journals, where such quarrels as exist are over details, not the basic concept ... Evolution has proved so useful as a paradigm for the origin and structure of life that it constitutes the foundation of the sciences of biology and medicine. — Victor J. Stenger

The claim that the universe *began* with the big bang has no basis in current physical and cosmological knowledge. The observations confirming the big bang do not rule out the possibility of a prior universe. — Victor J. Stenger

The existence of matter and energy in the universe did not require the violation of energy conservation at the assumed creation. In fact, the data strongly support the hypothesis that no such miracle occurred. If we regard such a miracle as predicted by the creator hypothesis, then the prediction is not confirmed. — Victor J. Stenger