God: The Failed Hypothesis (14 page)

²
Jerome W. Elbert,
Are Souls Real?
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), p. 37; David Eller,
Natural Atheism
(Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press, 2004), pp. 333-40.

³
Zimmer,
Soul Made Flesh,
p. 17.

⁴
Ibid. The Lucretius quotation is from Bernard Pullman,
The Atom in the History of Human Thought
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

⁵
Ibid., p. 36.

⁶
Philip Ball,
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), chap. 1.

⁷
Zimmer, Soul
Made Flesh.

⁸
C. J. Aine, “A Conceptual Overview and Critique of Functional Neuro-Imaging Techniques in Humans: I. MRI/fMRI and
PET
,”
Critical Reviews in Neurobiology
9, nos. 2-3 (1995): 229-309.

⁹
Jorge Moll et al., “Functional Networks in Emotive and Nonmoral Social Judgments,”
NeuroImage
16 (2002): 696-703.

¹⁰
Joshua D. Greene et al., “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment,”
Neuron
44 (2004): 389-400.

¹¹
Michael A. Persinger, “Paranormal and Religious Beliefs May Be Mediated Differently by Subcortical and Cortical Phenomenological Process of the Temporal (Limbic) Lobes,”
Perceptual and Motor Skills
76 (1993): 247-51.

¹²
P. Granqvist et al., “Sensed Presence and Mystical Experiences Are Predicted by Suggestibility, Not by the Application of Transcranial Weak Complex Magnetic Fields,”
Neuroscience Letters
379, no. 1 (2005): 1-6.

¹³
Olaf Blanke et al., “Stimulating Illusory Own-Body Perceptions,”
Nature
419 (September 19, 2002): 269-70.

¹⁴
Victor J. Stenger,
Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World beyond the Senses
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990), p. 111;
Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 290-99.

¹⁵
Pope Pius
XII
,
Humani Generis,
August 12, 1950.

¹⁶
Pope John Paul II, Address to the Academy of Sciences, October 28, 1986
L’Osservatore Romano,
English ed., November 24, 1986, p. 22.

¹⁷
Stenger,
Physics and Psychics.

¹⁸
Stenger,
Has Science Found God?

¹⁹
Stenger, “Bioenergetic Fields,”
Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
3, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1999).

²⁰
Joanne Stefanatos, “Introduction to Bioenergetic Medicine,” in
Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine: Principles and Practice,
ed. Allen M. Schoen and Susan G. Wynn (St. Louis: Mosby-Year Book, 1998), chap. 16.

²¹
L. Rosa et al., “A Close Look at Therapeutic Touch,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
279 (1998): 1005-10; Bela Scheiber and Carla Selby, eds.,
Therapeutic Touch
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).

²²
Xin Yan et al., “Certain Physical Manifestation and Effects of External Qi of Yan Xin Life Science Technology,”
Journal of Scientific Exploration
16, no. 3 (2002): 381-411.

²³
Stenger,
Physics and Psychics.

²⁴
See my discussion in Stenger,
Has Science Found God?
pp. 281-85.

²⁵
Crookes was drawn into spiritualism after the death of his brother in 1867. Lodge’s son was killed in Flanders in 1915, and Lodge turned to mediums to communicate with Raymond in the beyond.

²⁶
Stenger,
Physics and Psychics.

²⁷
John P. A. Ionnidas, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,”
Public Library of Science, Medicine
2, no. 8 (2005), “http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124”:http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 (accessed December 2, 2005).

²⁸
Jonathan A. Sterne and George Davey Smith, “Sifting the Evidence—What’s Wrong with Significance Tests?”
British Medical Journal
322 (2001): 226-31.

²⁹
Stenger,
Physics and Psychics; Has Science Found God?

³⁰
Dean Radin,
The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena
(New York: HarperEdge, 1997).

³¹
Douglas M. Stokes, “The Shrinking Filedrawer: On the Validity of Statistical Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology,”
Skeptical Inquirer
25, no. 3 (2001): 22-25.

³²
Jeffrey P. Bishop and Victor J. Stenger, “Retroactive Prayer: Lots of History, Not Much Mystery, and No Science,”
British Medical Journal
329 (2004): 1444-46.

³³
See, for example, Larry Dossey,
Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine
(San Francisco: Harper, 1993).

³⁴
Stenger,
Has Science Found God?
pp. 237-55.

³⁵
K. Y. Cha, D. P. Wirth, and R. A. Lobo, “Does Prayer Influence the Success of In Vitro Fertilization-Embryo Transfer? Report of a Masked, Randomized Trial,”
Journal of Reproductive Medicine
46, no. 9 (September 2001): 781-87.

³⁶
Timothy Johnson, “Praying for Pregnancy: Study Says Prayer Helps Women Get Pregnant,”
ABC
Television,
Good Morning America,
October 4, 2001.

³⁷
Bruce L. Flamm, “Faith Healing by Prayer,” review of “Does Prayer Influence the Success of In Vitro Fertilization-Embryo Transfer?” by K. Y. Cha, D. P. Wirth, and R. A. Lobo,
Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
6, no. 1 (2002): 47-50; Bruce L. Flamm, “Faith Healing Confronts Modern Medicine,”
Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine
8, no. 1 (2004): 9-14.

³⁸
See references in Flamm, “Faith Healing Confronts Modern Medicine.”

³⁹
Dossey, Response to letter to the editor,
Southern California Physician
(December 2001): 46.

⁴⁰
Leonard Leibovici, “Effects of Remote, Retroactive Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients with Bloodstream Infections: A Controlled Trial,”
British Medical Journal
323 (2001): 1450-51.

⁴¹
Leonard Leibovici, “Alternative (Complementary) Medicine: A Cuckoo in the Nest of Empiricist Reed Warblers,”
British Medical Journal
319 (1999): 1629-31.

⁴²
Brian Olshansky and Larry Dossey, “Retroactive Prayer: A Preposterous Hypothesis?”
British Medical Journal
327 (2003): 1460-63.

⁴³
Bishop and Stenger, “Retroactive Prayer.”

⁴⁴
Victor J. Stenger,
The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995).

⁴⁵
Victor J. Stenger,
Timeless Reality: Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).

⁴⁶
Randolph C. Byrd, “Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population,”
Southern Medical Journal
81, no. 7 (1988): 826-29; W. S. Harris et al., “A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit,”
Archives of Internal Medicine
159 (1999): 2273-78.

⁴⁷
M. W. Krucoff et al., “Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualiza-tion of Noetic Trainings (
MANTRA
) II Randomized Study,”
Lancet
366 (July 16, 2005): 211-17; for a media report, see Jonathan Petre, “Power of Prayer Found Wanting in Hospital Trial,”
News Telegraph,
October 15, 2003,
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/15/nprayl5.xml
(accessed December 6, 2004).

⁴⁸
Nathan Bupp, “Follow-up Study on Prayer Therapy May Help Refute False and Misleading Information about Earlier Prayer Study,”
Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health,
http://csmmh.org/prayer/
MANTRA
.release.htm
, July 22, 2005 (accessed December 16, 2005).

⁴⁹
Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health,
http://www.dukespiritualityandhealth.org/books/
(accessed December 16, 2005).

⁵⁰
H. Benson et al., “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (
STEP
) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer,”
American Heart Journal
151, no. 4 (2006): 934-42.

⁵¹
1 Corinthians 15:14.

⁵²
Corliss Lamont,
The Illusion of Immortality,
5th ed. (New York: Continuum, 1990). First published in 1935.

⁵³
Ibid., pp. 43-44.

⁵⁴
Stenger,
Has Science Found God?
pp. 290-99.

⁵⁵
Susan Blackmore,
Dying to Live: Near-Death Experiences
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1993).

⁵⁶
Mark Fox,
Religion, Spirituality, and the Near-Death Experience
(New York: Routledge, 2003).

⁵⁷
Nancey Murphy in
Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature,
ed. Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), p. 18.

⁵⁸
Ibid., p. 25.

⁵⁹
Warren S. Brown in
Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature,
ed. Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), p. 102.

⁶⁰
Ibid., p. 125.

⁶¹
For further reading on the philosophical aspects of the mind-body problem in the light of current research, see Daniel Dennett,_ Consciousness Explained_ (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991); Patricia Smith Churchland,
Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain
(Cambridge, MA:
MIT
Press, 1996); Paul M. Churchland,
The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain
(Cambridge, MA:
MIT
Press, 1996); George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,
Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought
(New York: Basic Books, 1999).

The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

—James Clerk Maxwell

Miracles

L
et us now move from Earth to the cosmos in our search for evidence of the creator God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. From a modern scientific perspective, what are the empirical and theoretical implications of the hypothesis of a supernatural creation? We need to seek evidence that the universe (1) had an origin and (2) that origin cannot have happened naturally.

One sign of a supernatural creation would be a direct empirical confirmation that a miracle was necessary in order to bring the universe into existence. That is, cosmological data should either show evidence for one or more violations of well-established laws of nature or the models developed to describe those data should require some causal ingredient that cannot be understood—and be probably not understandable—in purely material or natural terms.

Now, as philosopher David Hume pointed out centuries ago, many problems exist with the whole notion of miracles. Three types of possible miracles can be identified: (1) violations of established laws of nature, (2) inexplicable events, and (3) highly unlikely coincidences. The latter two can be subsumed into the first since they also would imply a disagreement with current knowledge.

In previous chapters I have given examples of observations that would confirm the reality of supernatural powers of the human mind. We can easily imagine cosmic phenomena that would forever defy material expectations. Suppose a new planet were to suddenly appear in the solar system. Such an observation would violate energy conservation and reasonably be classified as a supernatural event.

Scientists will make every effort to find a natural mechanism for any unusual event, and the layperson is likely to agree that such a mechanism might be possible since “science does not know everything.”

However, science knows a lot more than most people realize.

Despite the talk of “scientific revolutions” and “paradigm shifts,” the basic laws of physics are essentially the same today as they were at the time of Newton. Of course they have been expanded and revised, especially with the twentieth-century developments of relativity and quantum mechanics. But anyone familiar with modern physics will have to agree that certain fundamentals, in particular the great conservation principles of energy and momentum, have not changed in four hundred years
¹
. The conservation principles and Newton’s laws of motion still appear in relativity and quantum mechanics. Newton’s law of gravity is still used to calculate the orbits of spacecraft.

Conservation of energy and other basic laws hold true in the most distant observed galaxy and in the cosmic microwave background, implying that these laws have been valid for over thirteen billion years. Surely any observation of their violation during the puny human life span would be reasonably termed a miracle.

Theologian Richard Swinburne suggests that we define a miracle as a nonrepeatable exception to a law of nature
²
. Of course, we can always redefine the law to include the exception, but that would be somewhat arbitrary. Laws are meant to describe repeatable events.