Book Review: God and the Folly of Faith by Victor J. Stenger

Victor Stenger has had a long career in experimental high-energy physics. He has become a prolific writer on the intersection of science and religion and I have referred to him frequently in past blog posts, especially to material in his 2007 book God: The Failed Hypothesis. Stenger is an unabashed ‘new atheist’ who thinks that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible and does not shy away from saying so bluntly. The title of his latest book (and its subtitle The Incompatibility of Science and Religion) leaves the reader with no doubt as to where he stands. The book was released this month and I have just had the pleasure of reading it. It essentially updates and expands on the arguments of that earlier one. [Read more…]

Is philosophy science?

In general, questions such as “Is (subject X) a science?” are not very useful. After all, what does it matter what label you assign to something? In certain situations though, the label matters quite a lot. In the US, because of the Establishment Clause, the answer to the question of whether a theory is scientific or religious can determine if it can be taught in public schools. This is why religious people constantly seek to either label their religious beliefs (creationism and intelligent design) as science or seek to have those theories that threaten religion (like evolution) be classified as something other than science. [Read more…]

The problem with scientific replications

One of the tenets of science is that the results be reproducible. One consequence of this maxim is that any paper that is published should have sufficient information that would enable anyone who wishes to do so to replicate the results. But there is no real incentive for people to try and replicate the work of others. It takes a lot of time and effort and one cannot publish a confirmation of someone else’s result unless the original result was so revolutionary that supportive evidence is called for. The cold fusion and the faster-than-light neutrino stories were examples of such high-profile cases. [Read more…]