positiveatheism.org
November 6, 1999
Introduction: While Cliff was setting up the recording device, Victor perused Cliff's copy of Patrick Glynn's 1997 book, God: The Evidence. Cliff had mentioned that he wanted to discuss the Anthropic Principle, as advocated in Glynn's book, and how Glynn's idea of the Anthropic Principle differs from two principles of the same name discussed in Stephen W. Hawking's 1988 book, A Brief History of Time. Cliff had also mentioned that he wanted to find out whether Glynn's use of physics to bolster his argument involves accepted ideas within the science of physics, or if Glynn was misrepresenting what physics says in making his case.
This is what was said between the time the recorder started functioning and the official beginning of the interview. We include this fragment because later discussions refer to what was discussed here. Also, at the time this discussion took place, Victor was clearly under the impression that the interview had already started; thus, we do not consider inclusion of this fragment an invasion of any sort.
Cliff Walker: Did you see the part I was talking about?
Victor Stenger: Yeah. I know which [Anthropic argument] your talking about.
Cliff Walker: It's different from the one that Stephen Hawking describes.
Victor Stenger: That issue hadn't really arisen when I wrote Not By Design, but I do discuss that in The Unconscious Quantum, in Chapter 8, and I've [since] gone a little further. That's basically what I will be talking about today, that argument, the Anthropic argument.
Cliff Walker: Oh, good! I covered it about six months ago [May, 1999: "Questions from a Protestant"], and I hadn't encountered anything about it yet (I hadn't read your book.) I read this book [Glynn's God: The Evidence], and I put some questions out to our e-mail list (there are a few physicists on our list), and nobody had heard the argument.
Victor Stenger: Well, I've written a bunch of stuff on this already. I have an article that I wrote for the National Center for Science Education's report, that came out a couple of years ago, now. I wrote a long article for the Skeptical Intelligencer, which is a British skeptics organization. (All of this stuff is on my Web page.) And I had a recent one in Skeptical Inquirer, in a special religion issue.
Cliff Walker: Was I thinking of one in Skeptic?
Victor Stenger: Actually, now that you mention it, I also wrote something for Skeptic on this. So I've written articles on this specific anthropic argument, and that's what the main subject of my talk is today. I will cover some of the other cosmological type arguments. I will basically be trying to explain to people what the argument is and how to counter it.
Cliff Walker: There's a fragment from Francis Crick's Autobiography floating around India and elsewhere titled, "How I Became Inclined Towards Atheism." What's your story?
Victor Stenger: Oh, wow! That's a good one!
It certainly was a gradual thing. I was raised as a Catholic in a town, Bayonne, New Jersey, just across the river from New York City. An immigrant neighborhood, everybody was Catholic -- certainly, everybody was religious (there were obviously some Jewish people, but not too many Protestants). Although I went to public school, I went through the whole process of Catechism, and so on, and getting Communion. I had to go to church every Sunday, but just sitting there listening to sermon after sermon never convinced me. By the time I went to college I had pretty much split from being a Catholic.
After I graduated from college in the east, I went west. I went to U.C.L.A., to graduate school in physics. Interestingly enough, I started going to a church there, a big Methodist church that's right on Wilshire Boulevard there in Los Angeles, one of the big central churches there -- mainly because it was a nice place to meet young ladies and sing in the choir, and things of that sort. I actually had some good discussions with the ministers there. It was a very liberal church, a kind of liberal Protestantism you don't hear of any more. It's pretty much faded out of existence.
Cliff Walker: I think it's still around, they just leave us alone.
Victor Stenger: (Laughs) I actually didn't have too much of a problem with that. But then when I graduated from U.C.L.A. I moved to Hawaii, and didn't pursue any religious interests. Although my wife and I did send our children to private schools that had religious connections. Again, it was something that just didn't bother us much. It didn't make them religious. They ended up just as much nonbelievers as I am.
My wife is (this is an interesting story, too), my wife was always a nonbeliever. She tells a story about a time she was a child and there was a big lightning storm going on outside her house. (She grew up in Canada; this was up in the woods some place.) There was this big lightning storm, and she had her nose pressed to the window, and she said, "God, if you exist, show me a sign!" At just that instant there a tremendous flash of lightning.
And she said, "You know, I still didn't believe." (Laughs) It hadn't convinced her.
So our family, in other words, never took this up. Although, I was not a person who was out there getting into big fights and arguments about it.
Then toward around 1986 or so I got involved in some skeptical things. There were some psychics doing things on campus, at the University of Hawaii, that I wasn't too happy with. They were claiming they could train you in psychic abilities, and so on. So I kicked up a bit of a fuss about that, and that led to one thing after another.
Cliff Walker: Is that the football team incident you mentioned in your book?
Victor Stenger: No, this was actually before this. This was a fellow named Garith Pendragon. What happened is that he sued us. He sued me and bunch of other people, and that got me into the business of being an active skeptic. (You may know that I got sued by Uri Geller -- three times! All these suits turned out okay; I never had to pay a cent and he's had to pay quite a bit!) But this made me increasingly militant in my skepticism.
Then I started looking more and more into these science and religion issues, and I said, "Hey, that's right up my alley!" I'm a physicist, and I also know a lot about astronomy and cosmology, and I could see what was wrong with many of these arguments. They just did not hold water. The physicist and astronomers who were aware of this were not speaking up. They were just letting the theists have their way on these issues.
So, I began to carve out a little niche for myself, not only in a science and religion interface, but also in physics and the interface with psychic phenomena. That was another place where physicists were involved, but they were really not the mainstream of physicists. The mainstream physicists were just saying, "Oh, this is nonsense!" but they weren't doing anything about it. They weren't speaking out against it. So I became the one physicist who started to write and speak out about it.
Now, I might say, there are more. The American Physical Society has begun to take a much greater interest in these matters, because it realizes that science has something to say. 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."
That's been my main theme, just looking at the scientific end of it (that's been my expertise), and seeing what arguments hold water, and if they don't, saying so.
Cliff Walker: I spoke with Dr. M. Reza Ghadiri, who has perfected self-replicating molecules, and one of the things I brought up was the situation in Kansas, Tennessee, Illinois, and thankfully not Colorado -- what's that young girl's name, Emily --
Victor Stenger: Emily Rosa! New Mexico, recently, turned back the tide, too. They did a very impressive job. There was a bunch of scientists in New Mexico who were able to get to the education board and to convince them not only not to take evolution out of the schools, but to insist that it be taught in the schools. Otherwise, science students will not be getting the education in science that they need.
Cliff Walker: One study says 45 percent, one study says 46 percent, and one says 47 percent of Americans can be described as young-earth creationists. Is this a wake-up call for us? Or do we continue to let people be entitled to their opinions, as Dr. Ghadiri insisted that we do?
Victor Stenger: Well, people are entitled to their opinions, but when the opinion is in disagreement with the data -- with the facts -- when that opinion does not stand up under critical or rational scrutiny, I think we have a right to point that out. We shouldn't be stepping on anybody's toes when we do that. If they're going to be spouting off nonsense, then we should say that -- not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of scientific fact. When someone says science says something, and science doesn't say something ("It doesn't say that! That's a misrepresentation of what science says!"), then I think we can state that. And if it ruffles some feathers, so what? I just don't see the basis for arguing that creationism has equal standing with evolution.
Cliff Walker: Do you think scientists need to speak out? and-or do you think science itself may need a branch that is more like a spokesperson?
Victor Stenger: I think scientists tend to say, "Leave me alone. I want to do my own work. This is not something I want to spend my time on." It's sort of a bottomless pit. So they tend to stay away from it.
Although I think it's interesting to note that there have been some recent surveys of scientists in the U.S., and their beliefs, and how their beliefs have changed over the years. (Actually, they haven't changed; that's what the survey revealed.) While something like 90 percent or more of the American people believe in God, that percentage is about 40 percent for all scientists and mathematicians. When you get down to physicists and astronomers, it's only 20 percent. I think for biologists it's even less, I'm not sure what the exact figure for biologists --
Cliff Walker: I think its five or six.
Victor Stenger: Yeah, a very low percentage for biologists.
And the other interesting figure is that they did a survey of the National Academy of Sciences which, of course, contains the top scientists in the country, and asked them specifically about a personal god (there are a lot of concepts of God that people talk about, they talk about Spinoza's god, associating "God" with the order of nature, and so fourth) but the personal god, the god that you can pray to and that takes a role in your life, that kind of god, only about seven percent of the members of the National Academy of Sciences believe in that kind of a god.
I remember (I forget who it was now) but there was some Representative who, on the House floor, was absolutely furious about that, but what could he do about it? What's he going to do, pass a bill saying that you can't be a member of the Academy unless you state a belief in a personal god? It's not the Boy Scouts! It's the National Academy of Sciences.
Cliff Walker: (Facetiously) So, is this some kind of atheist conspiracy, or something?
Victor Stenger: (Laughing) Where -- where's the conspiracy among a small group of people? It's just a small fraction of the total American public. But that points out that there is a strong disagreement between scientists and the community -- at least in the U.S. Remember, we're talking about the U.S. In other countries (except, perhaps, Iran and a few countries like that) there isn't this widespread fundamentalist belief in God, and what the Scriptures say, and interpret that as fact.
But in our country, we seem to have this aberration, almost. And it's rather strange because we're the one country that has benefitted, more than any country, from technology, from the fruits of science. And, of course, our science is the best in the world. Well, our high schools and our grade schools aren't so good. The undergraduate colleges are starting to look like high schools, now, dumbing down everything. But our graduate schools are still good, and our research is still good, and the majority of the Nobel Prizes are still coming to Americans. And so we have this tremendous science going on. It's supported well. And, of course, we have the industries that take what science gives them and develop all these wonders of technology.
And yet, the people who, on the one hand, are very rich because of that, don't like what science is telling them about the world. They like what science does for them, but they don't like what science tells them about reality. They haven't since the time of Galileo, from the time that the Earth was no longer the center of the Universe. People want to be at the center of the Universe. I think that's what you get from that, and they're going to flock to anybody who tells them that.
What we have now (and this is the whole point of this new claim of the convergence of science and religion) is that some scientists and theologians and philosophers who are theistically inclined are trying to tell us that there is a message out there in the Universe. There is evidence of design to the Universe. Religion was right after all. Of course, that's a very popular notion now, because people can have the best of both worlds: they can have the fruits of technology, and they can also say, "Yeah! Science has been telling me that I'm the center of the Universe after all!" They'll buy that any day!
If I wanted to make a lot of money (Well, I do want to make a lot of money!), but if I sacrificed my principles, I could write a book that would make me a lot of money saying just that, because that's what people want to hear. They don't want to hear what I'm telling them!
[This segment had been missing from the posted version.]
Cliff Walker: Alan Sokal?
Victor Stenger: Yes, Alan Sokal. [Laughs.] He was the physicist who hoaxed the postmodernists [who published a spoof scientific paper in the journal Social Text -- see Positive Atheism, April, 1999].
Cliff Walker: He called it a long series of non sequiters.
Victor Stenger: The postmodernists are a group of social scientists (and perhaps some philosophers, but not too many) who try to claim that science is just another narrative -- just like any other narrative -- and that what scientists say is just another story about the nature of things.
Cliff Walker: Is that line of reasoning going anywhere?
Victor Stenger: It hasn't, really. That line of reasoning has been pretty much limited to the academic world, particularly the social sciences.
There's a group of people who study science as a social activity -- and of course science is a social activity, and it's a legitimate study. The trouble is that a lot of them don't know science; they haven't really worked in science where they see how science goes about its activities. And so they're easily convinced that we make our own reality, for example, that the terms and the theories of science is just an invention -- which they are. The word electron is just our invention; we could have called it anything, but it represents something that I think exists in reality. And if we can't prove that it exists with the kind of logical deduction that they seem to want us to prove, that doesn't mean that it isn't there -- that it isn't an aspect of reality. So Sokal got a lot of publicity with his article [in Social Text] that parodied some of the stuff that is written by both social scientists and some of the people in literary criticism.
That created a stir, but at the same time I don't think it entered in any major way into the religion-science dialogue, because I think what's happening now is that theists are using science. They want science to be recognized as a powerful measure of reality, a powerful method for obtaining knowledge about reality, and to say, "Here is this very powerful thing, and this powerful thing is telling us that there is something out there, that there is design to the universe."
The main story there (that's new, compared to the old design arguments -- design arguments are pretty ancient -- this one is a new design argument) basically says that the universe is finely tuned. The constants of physics, the laws of physics, are delicately balanced for the existence of the universe as we know it, for the production of carbon and of the heavy elements that are needed for life. If any of these constants was changed ever so slightly, you wouldn't have carbon, you wouldn't have nitrogen and oxygen, you wouldn't have the complex materials that are needed for life.
That's why they call this the "anthropic coincidences," because they seem to suggest that the universe was designed with us in mind.
Cliff Walker: That's the old Teleological Argument.
Victor Stenger: Yes, that's what the claim is, that there's evidence that the universe was designed so that it could produce us. Now, it's really stretching it to say that it was designed to produced humans, because at best all they could say is that it was designed to produce carbon. Carbon, of course, is the stuff of life; life is able to evolve due to the complexity of molecules that are made of carbon. But it could have been just as well designed for cockroaches, or for bacteria.
Cliff Walker: When they throw the physics at us -- [the book] God: The Evidence by Patrick Glynn has a couple pages of physics in it -- how valid are the arguments when it comes to his physics, when it comes to his use of physics?
Victor Stenger: I think a lot of the literature that's out there is written by people who don't understand physics very well. However, let me make clear that there are some scientists (and theistic scientists and theologians and philosophers of theistic bent) who do understand the physics pretty well -- well enough to think. Glynn (is that his name?) oversimplifies it to a great degree. He is writing to the general public. But if you look at the philosophical journals and theological journals, and you read some of the more sophisticated stuff, it is a challenge to counter these.
However, let me make it clear that you won't read any of this in the scientific journals. Even though the argument is claimed to be a scientific one, you will not see it in any scientific journals. You'll see it still in philosophical journals; you'll see it still in theological literature. But these people are smart, and these people are sophisticated, and they're educated, and they know how to make good argument, and that's the one that's very tough to counter.
Cliff Walker: My favorite philosophical counter to all of this is, you can talk about unlikelihood, you can talk about complexity all you want, but in order to posit creation -- to even talk about creation -- you've got to cough up a creator first, before you can say, "creation." You can't use unlikelihood or complexity to make a solid case for creation. You can say, "Maybe it leans in that direction as a possibility," but that's as far as I'll allow myself to go on that.
Victor Stenger: The argument goes something like this: We can't understand how all of this could have happened by chance, therefore it didn't happen by chance, and therefore there must be a God.
Well, there's a number of assumptions, there. First of all, how do you know that it couldn't have happened by chance? We only have one universe to go by, and indeed that universe has life. So if you were to say, "Based on the data itself, what's the likelihood that a universe is going to have life?"
Well, we've only got one universe. The universe has life. The likelihood is one hundred percent! Where do they come away with saying the likelihood is so small? Well, it comes from theory, from making various kinds of assumptions.
So even if you buy into that, and you say, "Okay, so therefore there had to be something going on that set the whole thing in motion, why the Christian god? Why isn't it some other god? Why isn't it any of the thousands of other gods that exist? Why isn't it Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy? Or why isn't it the Devil? Or, why can't the universe itself -- ? Once you accept the possibility that some entity exists that could initiate things, without cause, without redesign, well why couldn't that be the universe, you see?
Cliff Walker: Richard Dawkins always hammers home Occam's Razor: if you're going to postulate that the universe is so vast and complex that it needs to be explained by having been created, then what you need to do now is explain the existence of an even more vast, even more complex creator on top of the universe.
Victor Stenger: That's right. This is an argument that we get into all the time with the more sophisticated theists, is, "What's the proper use of Occam's Razor? Whose hypothesis is the simpler, the more economic, the more parsimonious?"
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