Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness [Hardcover]

Victor J. Stenger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 2009

Does quantum mechanics show a connection between the human mind and the cosmos? Are our brains tuned into a "cosmic consciousness" that pervades the universe enabling us to make our own reality? Do quantum mechanics and chaos theory provide a place for God to act in the world without violating natural laws?

Many popular books make such claims and argue that key developments in twentieth-century physics, such as the uncertainty principle and the butterfly effect, support the notion that God or a universal mind acts upon material reality.

Physicist Victor J. Stenger examines these contentions in this carefully reasoned and incisive analysis of popular theories that seek to link spirituality to physics. Throughout the book Stenger alternates his discussions of popular spirituality with a survey of what the findings of twentieth-century physics actually mean. Thus he offers the reader a useful synopsis of contemporary religious ideas as well as basic but sophisticated physics presented in layperson's terms (without equations).

Of particular interest in this book is Stenger's discussion of a new kind of deism, which proposes a God who creates a universe with many possible pathways determined by chance, but otherwise does not interfere with the physical world or the lives of humans. Although it is possible, says Stenger, to conceive of such a God who plays dice with the universe and leaves no trace of his role as prime mover, such a God is a far cry from traditional religious ideas of God and, in effect, may as well not exist.

Like his bestselling book, God, The Failed Hypothesis, this new work presents a rigorously argued challenge to many popular notions of God and spirituality.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Lots of biologists defend evolution against creationism. Unfortunately, few scientists in the physics community speak up about the pseudoscience in their own field. The public understanding of modern physics is seriously out of whack, thanks largely to pop junk like The Secret and What the BLEEP Do We Know?

These books and movies promote a bogus version of quantum mechanics--the belief that 'you create your own reality' by controlling the laws of physics with your mind. They offer instant wealth and happiness, but they deliver medieval superstition. The sad part is that so many scientists are willing to let the public get their knowledge of physics from celebrity quacks.

That's why we re so lucky to have Victor Stenger. He knows quantum theory as well as anybody and, unlike most of his colleagues, he's willing to step outside the ivory tower and face those who misuse science. In Quantum Gods, Stenger confronts mainstream theologians and New Age gurus--anyone who tries to link physics to mysticism. He takes their theories seriously enough to examine them in detail and he finds that, so far, none of them live up to the standards of scientific truth. As we accompany him on his investigation, he guides us through the most important concepts in modern physics from relativity to string theory.

The world has needed a book like this for a long time. If you care about scientific literacy, Quantum Gods is not optional." --Geoff Gilpin, author of The Maharishi Effect: A Personal Journey Through the Movement That Transformed American Spirituality

About the Author

Victor J. Stenger (Lafayette, CO) is adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller God, The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist; Has Science Found God?; The Comprehensible Cosmos; Timeless Reality; The Unconscious Quantum; Physics and Psychics; and Not by Design.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 292 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (May 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591027136
• ISBN-13: 978-1591027133
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #518,364 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Victor J. Stenger grew up in a Catholic working-class neighborhood in Bayonne, New Jersey. His father was a Lithuanian immigrant, his mother the daughter of Hungarian immigrants. He attended public schools and received a bachelor's of science degree in electrical engineering from Newark College of Engineering (now New Jersey Institute of Technology) in 1956. While at NCE, he was editor of the student newspaper and received several journalism awards.

Moving to Los Angeles on a Hughes Aircraft Company fellowship, Dr. Stenger received a master's of science degree in physics from UCLA in 1959 and a PhD in physics in 1963. He then took a position on the faculty of the University of Hawaii, retiring to Colorado in 2000. He currently is emeritus professor of physics at the University of Hawaii and adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. Dr. Stenger is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a research fellow of the Center for Inquiry. Dr. Stenger has also held visiting positions on the faculties of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, Oxford in England (twice), and has been a visiting researcher at Rutherford Laboratory in England, the National Nuclear Physics Laboratory in Frascati, Italy, and the University of Florence in Italy.

His research career spanned the period of great progress in elementary particle physics that ultimately led to the current standard model. He participated in experiments that helped establish the properties of strange particles, quarks, gluons, and neutrinos. He also helped pioneer the emerging fields of very high-energy gamma-ray and neutrino astronomy. In his last project before retiring, Dr. Stenger collaborated on the underground experiment in Japan that in 1998 showed for the first time that the neutrino has mass. The Japanese leader of this experiment shared the 2002 Nobel Prize for this work.

Victor Stenger has had a parallel career as an author of critically well-received popular-level books that interface between physics and cosmology and philosophy, religion, and pseudoscience. These include: Not by Design: The Origin of the Universe (1988); Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World beyond the Senses (1990); The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology (1995); Timeless Reality: Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes (2000); Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe (2003); The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come From? (2006); God: The Failed Hypothesis--How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (2007); Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness (2009); The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason (2009). God: The Failed Hypothesis made the New York Times Best Seller List in March 2007.

Vic and his wife, Phylliss, have been happily married since 1962 and have two children and four grandchildren. They now live in Lafayette, Colorado. Phylliss and Vic are avid doubles tennis players and generally enjoy the outdoor life in Colorado, and they travel the world as often as they can.

Dr. Stenger maintains a popular Web site (a thousand hits per month), where much of his writing can be found, at http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Collapsing the Mystics' Wave Function, June 27, 2009

By 

Logan Narcomey (Oklahoma City, OK USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness (Hardcover)

"Finally!" I thought when I heard about this book. Popular-level physics books commonly drench themselves in the "gee whiz" factors of science communication, talking about multiple universes and dimensions and time travel, and the end result being a lot of sparkle with little substance (think Michio Kaku, whose writings are a guilty pleasure of mine). That's all well and good, but sometimes what's needed most is to debunk popular misconceptions of science. Scores of anti-creationist books have been published, but so far as I know, Stenger's book "Quantum Gods" is the ONLY book-length critique of the abuse of quantum physics.

Stenger has 40 years of experience in particle physics research, so he's imminently qualified to take on quantum mysticists like Deepak Chopra and mystically-minded "physicists" like Amit Goswami and Fritjof Capra. Though it works well on its own, it's natural to think of this book as a sequel to his previous book, "God: The Failed Hypothesis". While that book took on the interventionist god of the Abrahamic religions, "Quantum Gods" targets the remainder: Hindus and Buddhists who think quantum physics will reconcile science and (their) religion, assorted New Agers, and namby-pamby "somethingists" (people who think there's "something out there", and are "spiritual but not religious"). Shimmied in awkwardly at the end are sophisticated Christian theologians who are aware of the pitfalls of the classic arguments for the Christian God and think the indeterminacy of quantum theory gives God a way to meddle in the physical world without being detected (*yawn*, the book could have done without that chapter).

Yet "Quantum Gods" has many saving graces. Stenger's interpretation of the laws of physics, potentially mind-blowing for me, is that impartiality or "point-of-view invariance" is the source of the major laws of physics, such as the law of conservation of energy. He also had the chutzpah to challenge the "wavicle" nature of photons, saying that in reality, photons are particles, not waves, and the wave-like properties they seem to have under some circumstances are the result of predictable statistical patterns of streams of particles.

Given everything I read in this book, I still find an educated layman's logical argument against quantum idealism more effective and direct: if it is true that "the mind creates reality", than the scientific method would have been fruitless from the beginning. It is part of Chopra and Goswami's narrative that deterministic science became arrogant and was overthrown by quantum mechanics, a la Kuhn's "paradigm shift". Yet the scientific method rests on replicability and peer review. If the mind creates reality, then scientific rivals would always get different results testing the same phenomenon, no matter how well their controls are. Quantum mechanics itself has been extremely well-verified from competing groups of physicists worldwide, so ironically, if quantum idealism were true, quantum mechanics could not be.

In the end, Stenger's book is a needed defense of reductionism, determinism, materialism, and the piercing insight of the scientific frame of mind.

48 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Hard Hitting, May 7, 2009

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Robert B. Zannelli (Ocala FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness (Hardcover)

It is well known that Quantum Mechanics presents us with a picture of the world that is at odds with our everyday common sense. This fact has been seized on by new age gurus and some religionists to enlist Quantum theory as "proof" for their assertions. DR Stenger, who has a talent for making modern physics accessible to lay readers, takes on the new age Gurus and Quantum religionists, debunking their absurd and unsupported assertions. Along the way the reader is introduced to the real wonders of Quantum theory making this book fascinating as well as a useful source for debunking new age nonsense.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars disjointed and inconsistent, December 9, 2009

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saul "saul" (CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness (Hardcover)

I was very disappointed in this latest book by Victor Stenger. Although I enjoyed "God: The Failed Hypothesis", and am as much a skeptic about religion and mysticism as anyone, I think Stenger completely missed the ball on this one. I expected a book along the lines of Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World," in which Stenger would go case by case through modern examples of pseudoscience and debunk them one-by-one. I expected chapters on New Age practices such as homeopathy, psychic healing, and perhaps even shamanic and drug-induced mysticism. Rather, this book alternates between three types of information:

1) Rudimentary summaries of the beliefs Stenger is out to disprove (such What the Bleep Do We Know? and Trancendental Meditation) with only vague analysis. Although I find these concepts as unfounded as Stenger does, I could have found more information debunking them just by looking the up on Wikipedia. He offers only the briefest analysis of why these concepts are wrong and does not integrate this material with the physics presented in other chapters.

2) Rudimentary summaries of unrelated (and self-explanatory) scientific theories. Anyone picking up a book on quantum mechanics should presumably have some knowledge of the Copernican Revolution and evolutionary theory. This is not the place for high-school level musings of natural selection and the genius of Isaac Newton. These chapters felt condescending, and anyone who learned any new material in these chapters is not ready to be reading about quantum mechanics!

3) Advanced quantum physics. The "introductory-level" chapters in quantum theory that supposedly refute New-Age mysticism are discussed without ever really showing HOW they debunk New Age mysticism. Furthermore, while Stenger claims to be "simplyfying" the physics involved for the non-physics major, frankly I don't see how a lay-person like me is expected to make sense of it. There is no effort even to define basic terminology such as "vector" or "gauge invariance" without relating it to other equally scientific terms. A glossary would have helped.

In summary, this book alternates between material suitable for a high-schooler and material suitable for a physics major, with no attempt to get intermediate readers like myself up-to-speed. There are some writers who have the gift of explaining complex ideas to the average reader (Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker come to mind), but I am still waiting for such a book on quantum theory. Too bad this wasn't it.