I read Victor J. Stenger’s book, God, the Failed Hypothesis, with anticipation.  Stenger is a retired professor of physics and philosophy. I thought, “Finally, an atheist with something credible to say.”

Boy, his book title says it all. It sure was — I mean, Stenger’s book itself is a failed hypothesis. Stenger has nothing new to say. In 294 pages he should have had room for at least one passable and interesting scientific attack on our faith, but he never got around to it.

Stenger’s argument is that if God is as involved in our lives as we believers claim, then some evidence of God’s physical manifestation should be present. But instead of setting up a scientific hypothesis and testing it according to the scientific method to demonstrate that there is no physical evidence of God’s existence, Stenger launches into a rehash of many of the same old tired arguments made by atheists before him.

Stenger is not an historian, but he launches those arguments. Stenger is supposedly a professor of philosophy, and he does quote David Hume.  That’s going back 300 years, once again failing to demonstrate anything new. For example, he trots out the old saw, can God create a rock he cannot lift and still be omnipotent? Come on, Professor Stenger, think it through: among the things an omnipotent God can do is to limit his omnipotence as an act of His will.

But I digress. Stenger is a physicist, and it seemed likely from the cover of his book that he was going to launch into some new explanation of creation, the Big Bang, evolution (which is outside of his field of expertise), or something. Sadly, no. Stenger all but admits that he is faced with a universe he does not have the technology to explore and cannot understand. Indeed, he offers no hope that humankind will ever be able to explore or understand the universe. He claims there are 13.7 billion light years within reach of our instruments and “vision” but, rather than decrying the primitive nature of our technology, our nearly abandoned space exploration, and our societal loss of vision, he merely punts and “mumbles” that “our species is probably marooned in space, on spaceship Earth.” Stenger may be a scientist, but he seems to possess no real dreams for physics or mankind.

Stenger concludes (and by what scientific measure or test it is unclear, from his handy-dandy easy-read volume) that “it is also hard to believe that the universe was created with a special, cosmic purpose for intelligent life of any kind.” Billions of humans have not, apparently, convinced him otherwise.

I will not comment on Stenger’s discussions of theology, “prayer experiments” (because they were not physics experiments but rather psychology or sociology experiments outside of his field of expertise, but for which he still has an opinion) and archaeology (and about which he still has an opinion). Stenger defames Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell, but does not quote from the book, nor demonstrate that McDowell’s book is in error, nor offer his own counter-proofs for inspection. Rather, his criticism is largely the equivalent of, “The boy ain’t right!” I expected more.