Bøger af Victor J. Stenger

Cosmologists have reasons to believe that the vast universe in which we live is just one of an endless number of other universes within a multiversea mind-boggling array that may extend indefinitely in space and endlessly in both the past and the future. Victor Stenger reviews the key developments in the history of science that led to the current consensus view of astrophysicists, taking pains to explain essential concepts and discoveries in accessible terminology. The author shows that science's emerging understanding of the multiverseconsisting of trillions upon trillions of galaxiesis fully explicable in naturalistic terms with no need for supernatural forces to explain its origin or ongoing existence.How can conceptions of God, traditional or otherwise, be squared with this new worldview? The author shows how long-held beliefs will need to undergo major revision or otherwise face eventual extinction.

This history of atomism, from Democritus to the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, chronicles one of the most successful scientific hypotheses ever devised.Originating separately in both ancient Greece and India, the concept of the atom persisted for centuries, despite often running afoul of conventional thinking. Until the twentieth century, no direct evidence for atoms existed. Today it is possible to actually observe atoms using a scanning tunneling microscope. In this book, physicist Victor J. Stenger makes the case that, in the final analysis, atoms and the void are all that exists.The book begins with the story of the earliest atomists - the ancient Greek philosophers Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, and the Latin poet Lucretius. As the author notes, the idea of elementary particles as the foundation of reality had many opponents throughout history - from Aristotle to Christian theologians and even some nineteenth-century chemists and philosophers. While theists today accept that the evidence for the atomic theory of matter is overwhelming, they reject the atheistic implications of that theory.In conclusion, the author underscores the main point made throughout this work: the total absence of empirical facts and theoretical arguments to support the existence of any component to reality other than atoms and the void can be taken as proof beyond a reasonable doubt that such a component is nowhere to be found.

In this new book, Stenger ("God: The Failed Hypothesis") reviews and expands upon the principles of New Atheism and answers many of its critics. He demonstrates in detail that naturalism--the view that all of reality is reducible to matter and nothing else--is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe.

Over the years, a number of scientists have claimed that there is credible scientific evidence for the existence of God. Is this true? Are scientists close to solving the greatest of all mysteries? This book delves into this question from a sceptical point of view in the presentation of the key scientific facts.