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Nature is capable of building complex structures by processes of self-organization simplicity begets complexity.

Victor J. Stenger

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Victor J. Stenger
Age: 79 †
Born: 1935
Born: January 29
Died: 2014
Died: August 25
Astronomer
Philosopher
Physicist
Writer
Bayonne
New Jersey
Victor John Stenger
Process
Complex
Nature
Simplicity
Self
Structure
Organization
Begets
Atheism
Structures
Capable
Processes
Building
Complexity
Religion
Complexes

More quotes by Victor J. Stenger

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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
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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
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Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.
Victor J. Stenger
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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
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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
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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
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Is there a place in a church where you leave your brains when you enter?
Victor J. Stenger
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Just because quantum mechanics is weird does not mean that everything that is weird is quantum mechanics.
Victor J. Stenger
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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
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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
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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
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The so-called mysteries of quantum mechanics are in its philosophical interpretation, not in its mathematics.
Victor J. Stenger
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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
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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
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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
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Thought, without the data on which to structure that thought, leads nowhere.
Victor J. Stenger