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/////////////////////Richard Dawkins, Author of the New York Times best-seller The God Delusion"Darwin chased God out of his old haunts in biology, and he scurried for safety down the rabbit hole of physics. The laws and constants of the universe, we were told, are too good to be true: a set-up, carefully tuned to allow the eventual evolution of life. It needed a good physicist to show us the fallacy, and Victor Stenger lucidly does so. The faithful won't change their minds, of course (that is what faith means) but Victor Stenger drives a pack of energetic ferrets down the last major bolt hole and God is running out of refuges in which to hide. I learned an enormous amount from this splendid book."
Sam Harris, author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation"Marshalling converging arguments from physics, astronomy, biology, and philosophy, Stenger has delivered a masterful blow in defense of reason. God: The Failed Hypothesis is a potent, readable, and well-timed assault upon religious delusion. It should be widely read."
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Jaume Puigbo Vila "cosmos fun" (Barcelona, Spain) - See all my reviews In a time when any human group is coming out of the closet, finally atheists are doing the same and are being outspoken. Articles and books by Dawkins, Harris, Dennet and Stenger are much needed in America, less so in old Europe where Sunday church attendance is low. I always wonder if there is a connection between a highly religious society and one with a high percentage of inmigrants o descendants of inmigrants. Religion is one of the last taboos, "the opium of the people" as marxism declared. Books such as Stenger's probably will not convince believers, but will reaffirm non believers. Religion is more part of our emotions than of our rationality. Why some people in Spain support Real Madrid soccer team and others Barcelona? There is no rationale, only emotions. Naturally, you can still debate in the light of science and philosophy whether such and such god is likely to exist or not. I read Stenger's book with interest in a couple of days and found some interesting things such as: -Jesus was not the first to say that you must love your enemies. Taoism and buddhism had already expressed the same ideas much earlier. -"Nothing" is unstable so it is bound to produce "something". This answers the central philosophical question: Why is there something rather than nothing? -There is no archeological evidence that Nses spent 40 years in the desert with 600.000 people (what a logistic nightmare!). -Simplicity begets complexity (that I already knew since reading "The Blind Watchmaker" and knowing about genetic algorithms). Stenger gives so many (most simple) scientific arguments why God cannot exist that we should wonder why so many people still believe in it. The answer may lie in Sartre's dictum: "Man's essence is its desire to be God". In other words: God is our projection. Man may be the first entity by means of which the Univers wonders about itself. What are we doing here? Man has a desire to be trascendent, however the harsh reality is that we are all mortal. Having said that, isn't mortality needed so the Mankind and the Univers can evolve? Where would we be if the inquisitors, Hitler, Stalin wouldn't be dead? In other words: we still do not deserve immortality. But if we cannot be immortal (at least our soul), what is life's meaning? Stenger also provides some answers such as learn science, diminish the suffering, enjoy life and also quotes Aristotle's answers: contemplation, politics and the pursuit of pleasure which should equate approximately with the previous three. For me it all boils down to love, being a good citizen and finding a worthwhile activity that you like. As Woody Allen expressed succintly: "I enjoy making films". That's all there is, at least, for the time being.
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watzizname "watzizname" (Murfreesboro, Tennessee) - See all my reviews No, this book doesn't prove that there is no god, nor does it claim to. What it does clearly demonstrate is that the arguments and "evidence" that have been offered to buttress the assertion of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God fail, and in many cases actually weaken what they are presented in support of. Dr. Stenger explains why it is unnecessary to posit a god to explain the existence of the universe or the existence of life. As knowledge of the way the universe works has increased, there have been fewer and fewer phenomena that seemed to need a god to explain them. That is why Michael D. Goulder, a leading New Testament scholar, resigned the priesthood and became an atheist, saying that he couldn't worship an unemployed God. This book offers no refutation of the god of Pantheism; the Pantheist god is defined as everything that exists, and it would be difficult to refute the claim that what exists exists. However, that definition of god is not what most people mean by the word. Stenger offers a list of 8 definitional attributes that he suggests (I think correctly, for the most part) fit what most people mean by "God." (this list is abbreviated) 1. Creator of the universe. 2. Author of the laws of nature. 3. Occasionally violates his own laws by performing miracles. 4. Creator of life, especially human life. 5. Provider of immotal souls for humans. 6. Source of morality. 7. Revealer of Truth via Scripture and directly to certain persons. 8. Does not deliberately hide from humans who seek him. (Read the complete text of each item on pp. 41-42.) It is these 8, plus 2 of the 3 O's (Omnipotent and omnibenevolent) which Stenger refutes. He does not discuss omniscience, perhaps because Kurt Goedel and Werner Heisenberg have demonstrated that an omniscient entity cannot exist. NOTE: Mr. Wesley Janssen (in the comments) has demonstrated that I was in error in the previous sentence; Goedel and Heisenberg did not prove quite what I thought they did. Thank you, Mr. Janssen; I stand corrected. I have only one small complaint: Like too many books these days, it fails to put the footnotes where they belong, on the pages that reference them.
/////////////////////////////qntm pntff=What Is an Uncomputer?
Posted: 11 Jan 2008 01:31 PM CST
Sean watches a panel discussion on whether the universe is a computer, looks up the definition of a computer, and decides that instead the universe is a calculation. If thinking about the universe as a computer is designed to make computer scientists feel important, thinking about the universe as a calculation seems designed to make theoretical physicists feel important :) But what I find interesting is that Sean points to a question asked by Tony Leggett: "What kind of process does not count as a computation?"
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