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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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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
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Elites
American
Scientists
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Elite
More quotes by Victor J. Stenger
Nature is capable of building complex structures by processes of self-organization simplicity begets complexity.
Victor J. Stenger
When people start using science to argue for their specific beliefs and delusions, to try to claim that they're supported by science, then scientists at least have to speak up and say, You re welcome to your delusions, but don't say that they're supported by science.
Victor J. Stenger
Thought, without the data on which to structure that thought, leads nowhere.
Victor J. Stenger
Define self-awareness and tell me what it is about it that requires something more than a material explanation. I do not accept the burden of explaining all phenomena, real or imagined. If you think more than matter is required for this thing you call self-awareness, which you have not defined, then you have the burden of showing why.
Victor J. Stenger
Unlike those theists who at least pay lip service to science and scientific method, Johnson is out to convict science of fraud in the court of public opinion.
Victor J. Stenger
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
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
Just because quantum mechanics is weird does not mean that everything that is weird is quantum mechanics.
Victor J. Stenger
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
Selling eternal life is an unbeatable business, with no customers ever asking for their money back after the goods are not delivered.
Victor J. Stenger
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
People want to be at the center of the Universe...and they're going to flock to anybody who tells them that.
Victor J. Stenger
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
Saying the universe is eternal simply is saying that it has no beginning or end, not that it had a beginning an infinite time ago
Victor J. Stenger
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
Scientists have practical reasons for wishing that religion and science be kept separate. They can see nothing but trouble ... if they venture into the deeply divisive issue of religion - especially when their results tend to support a highly unpopular, atheistic conclusion.
Victor J. Stenger
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
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
Assuming the universe came from nothing, it is empty to begin with... Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.
Victor J. Stenger
With pantheism...the deity is associated with the order of nature or the universe itself...when modern scientists such as Einstein and Stephen Hawking mention 'God' in their writing, this is what they seem to mean: that God is Nature.
Victor J. Stenger
