The following is the second half of an interview to be published in the Greek weekly newspaper Eleftherotypia. Read Part 1 here.
Interview with Professor Victor Stenger
7. When a person says that he/she believes in God, should that person also prove the existence of God?
No. People have a right to believe whatever they believe. But it makes no sense to believe in something in the total absence of evidence and, indeed, evidence that supports the nonexistence of God. Since we have no need to introduce God to explain anything we observe in the world, when someone argues that God exists he has the burden of proof.
So far, no one has come up with a convincing case for the existence of God. Logical arguments fail because they assume what they seek to prove. Design arguments fail because the universe shows no evidence of design. Arguments from personal experience fail because they are anecdotal and cannot be verified. God-of-the-gaps arguments, that is, arguments that attempt to fill a gap in scientific knowledge with God, fail because science has a way of eventually filling its gaps.
8. What do you say to people when they ask you to prove that god does not exist?
I do so. The God most people worship--the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God--supposedly plays such an important role in the universe and human life that he should have been observed by now. For example, we should see evidence that prayers are answered or that God reveals truths to humans. We see no such evidence, which should be there, so we can safely conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that such a God does not exist.
Well-executed studies on the efficacy of prayer have been conduced by reputable scientists at reputable institutions such as Harvard, Duke University, and the Mayo Clinic. They have all found no evidence that prayer works. But they could have which shows that it is possible for science to discover God.
Similarly, revelation could be tested by performing experiments in which people who claim to talk to God provide some information they could not possibly know that is later verified scientifically.
While it is true that God could choose to hide from us, such a God would be an evil God since many people honestly seek some sign but God consigns them to eternal fire while accepting only those who irrationally worship him on faith alone.
9. Some years ago Daniel Dennett wrote a book in which he called for a scientific investigation of religion. Do you agree with this suggestion? I mean, can science and religion co-exist?
Just because science may study religion, that does not mean they are compatible. Two nations at war still co-exist. Religion has long been the subject of scientific study. Religion is a social phenomenon, which means it is observable. While science may not be able to speak on the nature of God, it can seek data that support or oppose his existence. And it can study the behavior of believers and nonbelievers and their effects on society.
10. Is it possible to be religious and rational?
Yes. Theology is rational since it follows rules of logic. However, any logical argument requires starting assumptions, and even when those assumptions are incorrect you still can arrive at a rational conclusion. Nothing can be proven by deductive logic that is not already built into the premises of the deductive procedure. Theologians rarely question their initial premise that God exists, so no matter how meticulous their logic may be, it cannot be used to prove there is a God. Theological conclusions are wrong because their premises are wrong.
The superiority of scientific thinking over religious thinking is not based on any philosophical arguments. Neither can prove anything about ultimate reality. But science has been so much more successful than religion in their respective roles in human progress that we have every reason to trust that science is likely to be closer to the truth.
11. No idea why or where I got such views, but as a child I always thought that belief in the 12 Gods of Olympus made as much sense as belief in one omnipotent, all knowing God. Is this a sign of faulty reasoning or ignorance about the history of religion?
No, your reasoning and historical knowledge are on the mark. Belief in a single, all-knowing God makes as much sense as belief in the Olympian gods, Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy. It is a throwback to the childhood of humanity.
12. To be a declared atheist is worse than someone confessing to be a communist in the McCarthy years. How do you explain this?
America is certainly an anomaly, being far more religious than other advanced countries. This is the result of a history in which the original settlers sought religious freedom, although they quickly denied it to others once they had the power to do so. There was a brief period during the Enlightenment when most of America's founding fathers--Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Paine, and Franklin--professed deism rather than Christian theism. But Christianity maintained its hold on the people and politicians had to follow suit or, as now, risk defeat at the polls.
Religion has always been a tool used by those in power to keep people in line. Witness the centuries during which the Divine Right of Kings enabled a few to live in great luxury while the masses were kept in wretchedness. Even today in India, the poor do not revolt against the wealthy because they have been sold the bill of goods that it is their "karma." They are miserable because of sins committed in their previous life, and look forward to improvement in their next life.
Today in America, royalty has been replaced by individuals and corporations of even greater wealth who use that wealth to buy elections. Politicians cannot survive in office without the money needed to campaign, and once in office must assure that their benefactors continue to prosper, with special tax breaks and other advantages. Religion is used by the oligarchy to convince ordinary people to vote against their own best interests by promoting a phony "values" agenda that voters think is more important than their own well being.
However, indications are that the unchurched in America are increasing rapidly, especially among the young. I hope that, within a generation, America will follow the lead of England, France, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in eliminating the previous dominant influence of religion in their countries. Then maybe people will begin to vote for what is best for them and not what is best for the super-rich.
13. Is the universe eternal?
We have no reason to assume the universe had a beginning. No doubt our universe began with the big bang, but it could have come from an earlier universe. Even if it did not, but appeared spontaneously from nothing, this implies, and modern cosmology indicates, that many universes exist beside our own. If this "multiverse" is eternal, there was no creation and thus no creator.
Theologians have argued that the universe had to have a beginning based on a forty year-old theoretical calculation by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose suggesting that a "singularity," an infinitesimal point of infinite energy density, may have occurred at the beginning of the big bang. In that case, theologians argued that time must have begun at that point. However, over thirty years ago both authors admitted that the singularity did not occur because of quantum mechanics. No working cosmologist today believes the universe began in a singularity.
Theologians also argue that the universe cannot be infinitely old because then it would take an infinite time to reach the present. However, an eternal universe had no beginning, not a beginning an infinite time ago. The time interval between now and any moment in the past is finite.
14. Why has faith been such a driving force among human beings throughout the ages?
As I alluded to previously, religion has always been useful in keeping the populace in line. Then of course, there is the fear of death. The promise by Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism of some form of eternal life is the major reason they have had such an enormous following. People with miserable lives find the hope of a better world in the hereafter very appealing.
Also, as I explained earlier, evolution had endowed us with a tendency to see agency in many places where no such agency exists. This once had survival value, but works against our well being today.
15. In your latest book, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, which will soon appear, you contend that the universe is not designed for us. Does this mean that life on planet earth was due to an accident. And what does this say about the possibility of extraterrestrial life?
Yes, life was very likely an accident, but we still do not understand the precise mechanism. So we cannot predict how common life may be in the universe. The current thinking is that primitive life, such as bacteria, is fairly common, but complex life, such as plants and animals, is probably very rare. But the universe is vast and may contain a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) planets. So even a very improbable accident is likely to have happened in other places.
The book refutes the claim that the physical parameters of the universe are so delicately balanced that they had to have been deliberately set by God to enable life, and humans in particular, to evolve. It is true that a slight change in any of these parameters would make life, as we know it, impossible. But it can be shown that some form of complex life is allowed for a wide variation of these parameters. Furthermore, the values of some of the parameters are fixed by definition or can be explained by the current highly successful standard models of physics and cosmology.