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GOD THE FAILED HYPOTHESIS
How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist
By VICTOR J. STENGER Prometheus Books
Copyright © 2007 Victor J. Stenger
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59102-481-1
Contents
Acknowledgments....................................................7 Preface............................................................9 Chapter 1: Models and Methods......................................21 Chapter 2: The Illusion of Design..................................47 Chapter 3: Searching for a World beyond Matter.....................77 Chapter 4: Cosmic Evidence.........................................113 Chapter 5: The Uncongenial Universe................................137 Chapter 6: The Failures of Revelation..............................169 Chapter 7: Do Our Values Come from God?............................193 Chapter 8: The Argument from Evil..................................215 Chapter 9: Possible and Impossible Gods............................227 Chapter 10: Living in the Godless Universe.........................243 Bibliography.......................................................261 Index..............................................................283 About the Author...................................................293
Chapter One
MODELS AND METHODS
All that belongs to human understanding, in this deepignorance and obscurity, is to be skeptical, or at least cautious; and not to admit of any hypothesis, whatsoever; much less, of any which is supported by no appearance of probability. -David Hume
LACK OF EVIDENCE
Many theologians and theistic scientists claim that evidence has been found for the existence of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God or, at least, some being with supernatural powers. However, they cannot deny that their evidence is not sufficiently convincing to satisfy the majority of scientists. Indeed, as we saw in the preface, the overwhelming majority of prominent American scientists has concluded that God does not exist. If God exists, where is he? Philosopher Theodore Drange has termed this the lack-of-evidence argument, which he states formally as follows:
1. Probably, if God were to exist, then there would be good objective evidence for his existence.
2. But there is no good objective evidence for his existence.
3. Therefore, probably God does not exist.
Drange criticizes premise 1 of the lack-of-evidence argument, pointing out that God could simply choose not to use the channel of objective evidence but directly implant that knowledge in human minds. However, as he and others have pointed out, such a deity would not be a perfectly loving God and the very existence of nonbelievers in the world who have not resisted such belief is evidence against his existence. The problem of divine hiddenness is one that has taxed the abilities of theologians over the years-almost as much as the problem of evil, which questions how an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God can allow so much unnecessary suffering among the planet's humans and animals. We will return to each of these problems.
However, independent of the unknowable intentions of a hypothetical being of infinite power and wisdom, objective evidence for an entity with godlike attributes should be readily available. After all, God is supposed to play a decisive role in every happening in the world. Surely we should see some sign of that in objective observations made by our eyes and ears, and especially by our most sensitive scientific instruments.
The founders and leaders of major religions have always claimed that God can be seen in the world around us. In Romans 1:20, St. Paul says: "Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." We will look for evidence of God in the things that have been made.
THE NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE
Before examining specific data, let us consider what constitutes "scientific evidence." Here I will limit myself to the kind of evidence that is needed to establish the validity of an extraordinary claim that goes beyond existing knowledge. Clearly the standard for this must be set much higher than that for an ordinary claim.
For example, an ordinary claim might be that an 81-milligram aspirin taken daily will reduce the chance of heart attacks and strokes. Such a claim is ordinary, because we have a plausible mechanism for such an effect in the resulting slight thinning of the blood. By contrast, an extraordinary claim might be that such a therapy would cure AIDS. Lacking any plausible mechanism, we would have to demand far more confirmatory data than in the first case.
We often hear of stories citing examples of dreams that came true. This would seem to suggest a power of the mind that goes beyond known physical capabilities. However, in this case, a strong selection process is taking place whereby all the millions of dreams that do not come true are simply ignored. Unless otherwise demonstrated, a plausible explanation that must first be ruled out is that the reported dream came true by chance selection out of many that had no such dramatic outcome.
How can we rule out chance or other artifacts? This is what the scientific method is all about. We might do a controlled experiment with hundreds of subjects recording their dreams upon awaking every morning. Independent investigators, with no stake in the outcome one way or another, would then perform a careful statistical analysis of the data. It would help if the dream outcomes were something simple and quantitative, like the winning number for a future lottery. Then the results could be compared with the easily calculated expectations from chance.
Allow me to list a few of the rules that the scientific community conventionally applies when evaluating any extraordinary claim. This is not complete by any means; nowhere can we find a document that officially lays down the scientific method to the complete satisfaction of a consensus of scientists and philosophers. However, five conditions suffice for our evaluation of claims of empirical evidence for extraordinary empirical claims in science:
Conditions for Considering Extraordinary Claims
1. The protocols of the study must be clear and impeccable so that all possibilities of error can be evaluated. The investigators, not the reviewers, carry the burden of identifying each possible source of error, explaining how it was minimized, and providing a quantitative estimate of the effect of each error. These errors can be systematic-attributable to biases in the experimental set up-or statistical-the result of chance fluctuations. No new effect can be claimed unless all the errors are small enough to make it highly unlikely that they are the source of the claimed effect.
2. The hypotheses being tested must be established clearly and explicitly before data taking begins, and not changed midway through the process or after looking at the data. In particular, "data mining" in which hypotheses are later changed to agree with some interesting but unanticipated results showing up in the data is unacceptable. This may be likened to painting a bull's-eye around wherever an arrow has struck. That is not to say that certain kinds of exploratory observations, in astronomy, for example, may not be examined for anomalous phenomena. But they are not used in hypothesis testing. They may lead to new hypotheses, but these hypotheses must then be independently tested according to the protocols I have outlined.
3. The people performing the study, that is, those taking and analyzing the data, must do so without any prejudgment of how the results should come out. This is perhaps the most difficult condition to follow to the letter, since most investigators start out with the hope of making a remarkable discovery that will bring them fame and fortune. They are often naturally reluctant to accept the negative results that more typically characterize much of research. Investigators may then revert to data mining, continuing to look until they convince themselves they have found what they were looking for. To enforce this condition and avoid such biases, certain techniques such as "blinding" may be included in the protocol, where neither the investigators nor the data takers and analyzers know what sample of data they are dealing with. For example, in doing a study on the efficacy of prayer, the investigators should not know who is being prayed for or who is doing the praying until all the data are in and ready to be analyzed.
4. The hypothesis being tested must be one that contains the seeds of its own destruction. Those making the hypothesis have the burden of providing examples of possible experimental results that would falsify the hypothesis. They must demonstrate that such a falsification has not occurred. A hypothesis that cannot be falsified is a hypothesis that has no value.
5. Even after passing the above criteria, reported results must be of such a nature that they can be independently replicated. Not until they are repeated under similar conditions by different (preferably skeptical) investigators will they be finally accepted into the ranks of scientific knowledge.
Our procedure in the following chapters will be to select out, one by one, certain limited sets of attributes and examine the empirical consequences that can reasonably be expected by the hypothesis of a god having those attributes. We will then look for evidence of these empirical consequences.
FALSIFICATION
Falsification was the demarcation criterion proposed in the 1930s by philosophers Karl Popper and Rudolf Carnap as a means for distinguishing legitimate scientific models from nonscientific conjectures. Since then, however, philosophers of science have found falsification insufficient for this purpose. For example, astrology is falsifiable (indeed, falsified) and not accepted as science. Nevertheless, falsification remains a very powerful tool that is used whenever possible. When a hypothesis is falsifiable by a direct empirical test, and that test fails, then the hypothesis can be safely discarded.
Now, a certain asymmetry exists when testing scientific models. While failure to pass a required test is sufficient to falsify a model, the passing of the test is not sufficient to verify the model. This is because we have no way of knowing a priori that other, competing models might be found someday that lead to the same empirical consequences as the one tested.
Often in science, models that fail some empirical test are modified in ways that enable them to pass the test on a second or third try. While some philosophers have claimed this shows that falsification does not happen in practice, the modified model can be regarded as a new model and the old version was still falsified. I saw many proposed models falsified during my forty-year research career in elementary particle physics and astrophysics; it does happen in practice.
Popper restricted falsification (which he equates to refutability) to empirical statements, and declared, "philosophical theories, or metaphysical theories, will be irrefutable by definition." He also noted that certain empirical statements are irrefutable. These are statements that he called "strict or pure existential statements." On the other hand, "restricted" existential statements are refutable. He gives this example:
"There exists a pearl which is ten times larger than the next largest pearl." If in this statement we restrict the words "There exists" to some finite region in space and time, then it may of course become a refutable statement. For example, the following statement is obviously empirically refutable: "At this moment and in this box here there exist at least two pearls one of which is ten times larger than the next largest pearl in this box." But then this statement is no longer a strict or pure existential statement: rather it is a restricted existential statement. A strict or pure existential statement applies to the whole universe, and it is irrefutable simply because there can be no method by which it could be refuted. For even if we were able to search our entire universe, the strict or pure existential statement would not be refuted by our failure to discover the required pearl, seeing that it might always be hiding in a place where we are not looking.
By this criterion, it would seem that the existence of God cannot be empirically refuted because to do so would require making an existential statement applying to the whole universe (plus whatever lies beyond). But, in looking at Popper's example, we see this is not the case for God. True, we cannot refute the existence of a God who, like the pearl in Popper's example, is somewhere outside the box, say, in another galaxy. But God is supposed to be everywhere, including inside every box. So when we search for God inside a single box, no matter how small, we should either find him, thus confirming his existence, or not find him, thus refuting his existence.
CAN SCIENCE STUDY THE SUPERNATURAL?
Most national science societies and organizations promoting science have issued statements asserting that science is limited to the consideration of natural processes and phenomena. For example, the United States National Academy of Sciences has stated, "Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral."
Those scientists and science organizations that would limit science to the investigation of natural causes provide unwitting support for the assertion that science is dogmatically naturalistic. In a series of books in the 1990s, law professor Phillip Johnson argued that the doctrine that nature is "all there is" is the virtually unquestioned assumption that underlies not only natural science but intellectual work of all kinds. In many of the public discussions we hear today, science is accused of dogmatically refusing to consider the possible role other than natural processes may play in the universe.
Given the public position of many scientists and their organizations, Johnson and his supporters have some basis for making a case that science is dogmatically materialistic. However, any type of dogmatism is the very antithesis of science. The history of science, from Copernicus and Galileo to the present, is replete with examples that belie the charge of dogmatism in science.
What history shows is that science is very demanding and does not blindly accept any new idea that someone can come up with. New claims must be thoroughly supported by the data, especially when they may conflict with well-established knowledge. Any research scientist will tell you how very difficult it is to discover new knowledge, convince your colleagues that it is correct-as they enthusiastically play devil's advocate-and then get your results through the peer-review process to publication. When scientists express their objections to claims such as evidence for intelligent design in the universe, they are not being dogmatic. They are simply applying the same standard they would for any other extraordinary claim and demanding extraordinary evidence.
Besides, why would any scientist object to the notion of intelligent design or other supernatural phenomena, should the data warrant that they deserve attention? Most scientists would be delighted at the opening up of an exciting new field of study that would undoubtedly receive generous funding. As we will see, intelligent design, in its current form, simply incorporates neither the evidence nor the theoretical arguments to warrant such attention.
Furthermore, the assertions that science does not study the supernatural and that supernatural hypotheses are untestable are factually incorrect. Right under the noses of the leaders of national science organizations who make these public statements, capable, credentialed scientists are investigating the possibility of supernatural causes. As we will discuss in a later chapter, reputable institutions such as the Mayo Clinic, Harvard University, and Duke University are studying phenomena that, if verified, would provide strong empirical support for the existence of some nonmaterial element in the universe. These experiments are designed to test the healing power of distant, blinded intercessory prayer. Their results have been published in peer-reviewed medical journals.
Unfortunately, the prayer literature is marred by some very poor experimental work. But in reading the best of the published papers of the most reputable organizations you will witness all the indications of proper scientific methodology at work. If they are not science, then I do not know what is.
The self-imposed convention of science that limits inquiry to objective observations of the world and generally seeks natural accounts for all phenomena is called methodological naturalism. We have also noted that methodological naturalism is often conflated with metaphysical naturalism, which assumes that reality itself is purely natural, that is, composed solely of material objects.
Methodological naturalism can still be applied without implying any dogmatic attachment to metaphysical naturalism. The thesis of this book is that the supernatural hypothesis of God is testable, verifiable, and falsifiable by the established methods of science. We can imagine all sorts of phenomena that, if observed by means of methodological naturalism, would suggest the possibility of some reality that is highly unlikely to be consistent with metaphysical naturalism.
For example, it could happen that a series of carefully controlled experiments provide independent, replicable, statistically significant evidence that distant, intercessory prayer of a specific kind, say, Catholic, cures certain illnesses while the prayers of other religious groups do not. It is difficult to imagine any plausible natural explanation for this hypothetical result.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from GOD THE FAILED HYPOTHESIS by VICTOR J. STENGER Copyright © 2007 by Victor J. Stenger. Excerpted by permission.
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