Thoughts on Stenger
Topics: Religion, Thoughts | June 30, 2008 @ 3:37 AM
Last Wednesday I drove down to Calgary with Ian to go to a talk (and book-signing) by Dr. Victor Stenger, a physicist who has written a number of books. His talk was focused on his latest book, God: The Failed Hypothesis. I wish now I had written some of this down, but I didn’t, so here are some notes from memory:
- Overall, the talk was good. He mainly rehashed points from his book (which I haven’t read yet, so it wasn’t so bad for me, but may have been for others).
- Of course, the real highlight of these talks is the question period. The questions were good, aside from the idiot behind us who didn’t understand anything (and tried to interrupt another person’s question) and the girl who thought science was started by Catholic priests.
- I enquired about the fact that most religious-minded people wouldn’t pick up a book called God: The Failed Hypothesis off the shelf of a bookstore (see my previous post where I discuss this fallacy). (Some lady wanted to answer this question for him, and then said that some United Church of Canada pastor had just written a book or essay or something saying that whether or not God exists doesn’t matter – so she didn’t really answer the question.) Dr. Stenger responded by admitting that he was indeed preaching to the choir, but then he pointed out that the choir could always using preaching. He also said that he’s received communications (I can’t remember if they were physical letters or email letters) from atheists saying that his book has helped them in arguments with theists.
- He also talked a bit about his new book, called Quantum Gods, which if I remember correctly is coming out next year. In it he will talk about all this quantum spiritualism junk we’ve been getting lately, such as What the Bleep Do We Know!? and The Secret. I’m looking forward to this book, because while I’ve seen numerous refutations of that kind of crap, it’s mainly been periodical in nature, and as far as I know we don’t have a full-fledged book on this stuff yet (though, of course, I may be wrong).
- What I liked best about him was that he was always careful in denoting his domain of consideration – id est, he made sure to point out under what circumstances his arguments apply. He points out that his arguments work only towards the kind of god that is supposed to perform some kind of direct action on the universe (e.g. prayer, or increasing the amount of order in the universe to create us). There was an Indian physics professor who asked about “God as a concept”; I don’t remember his exact response, but if I remember correctly, he pointed out that indeed, his arguments aren’t meant for that kind of god.
My thoughts on the latter: if you remove all notions of an interactive god, what do you even have left? It seems to me that to have God simply as a concept is mightily superfluous. If God doesn’t do anything in the universe, why even invoke Him? If he has no explanatory power (which he doesn’t), what do you need Him for, other than to make yourself feel better (or else because you’re too afraid to let go of a notion with which you’ve been raised and had your entire life)?
Lastly, there was a bit of hypocrisy from some people there. When someone mentioned being able to say that one is atheist without being heckled or looked down upon, many people applauded. But when the Indian professor asked about “God as a concept”, there were several people who shook their heads. Isn’t that rather hypocritical? If you want people to treat you respectfully despite your beliefs, shouldn’t you do the same to others? When Dr. Stenger made note of the people who shook their heads, the Indian professor responded with “someone will shake their heads no matter what you say.” He’s right; there’s no way you can please everybody. But it’d be nice if we all showed a little respect while demanding it of others.
1,488 views | Trackback
