Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness
Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness
|
 List Price: $26.98 Sale Price: $17.81 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Eligible For Free Shipping 
|
Product Description
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.
Details
- ISBN13: 9781591027133
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Rating
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.
Rating
I think this is the sort of book everybody should read but on the contrary if everybody had had too much insight and knowledge of what is written in the book then they probably would’nt purchase it. People do not want know that which contradicts their engrammed beliefs. But they say if an ostrich buries its head in the sand his most vulnerable parts are exposed to oncoming danger. As for myself this book has again confirmed that the “truth has set me free”. The book should not be seen as a threat to anyone’s belief system but as a guide as how one is going express/migrate from one’s cultural belief/religion to something within a new paradigm.
Rating
“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.
Rating
Here is a carefully written dose of scientific literacy, from a professional astrophysicist, on a subject for which there are any number of pseudoscientific and quackery books. Victor Stenger explains why some currently popular ideas about quantum mechanics, one of the fundamental theories of modern physics, which involve the observer creating physical reality and playing a god-like role, are simply nonsense from a scientific point of view. People will always be fond of books which tell them they can play the role of gods, but here you can see why this is just not true. Many will not find this as entertaining as the pseudoscience, but before you decide which kind of book to read ask yourself if you like playing the fool.
Rating
Vic Stenger has a no-nonsense insiders view of science. In this book he brings his expertise to bear on mysticism and obfuscation that has accumulated around the strangeness of quantum mechanics. He shows that while quantum mechanics may be counter-intuitive it doesn’t support TV pitchmen like Depak Chopra or let you create your own reality as suggested by the film “What the #@%& Do We Know?” He draws some interesting philosophical conclusions about the God of a quantum universe must be like. I found it an entertaining and informative read.
Rating
QUANTUM GODS: CREATION, CHAOS, AND THE SEARCH FOR COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS offers a satisfying blend of hard science (quantum mechanics) and spirituality that consider connections between the human brain and the universe. Physicist Victor Stenger offers an analysis of the popular theories trying to link spirituality to physics, considering what 20th century physics findings really mean and how to blend religious basics into these new discoveries. Any science or spirituality library will find this an intriguing survey.
Rating
I found this book to be thought-provoking and worth reading, although I have a couple of substantial criticisms. Up front, let me say it felt somewhat padded to get to book-length: about half (roughly the middle half) consists of encyclopedia entry-style sections on topics in the history of science.
The motivation behind the book is a good one: a sequel to his prior book which moves beyond traditional religion to criticize some newer and less traditional ideas about God and spirituality. He identifies two targets: the first is the group of new age-type ideas which invoke quantum mechanics (QM) to support ideas about personal spiritual powers and/or cosmic consciousness; the second is a set of attempts to accommodate God’s putative role as creator or intervening agent with modern science.
With regard to the first target, I liked his debunking of new-agers who think humans “create their own reality” and thereby acquire something like paranormal powers. What I didn’t like is that his own interpretation of QM is idiosyncratic: he tries to hew as close as possible to the worldview of classical materialism. He dismisses the reality of the wave-like aspect of QM, and tries to argue we can have a particle-only ontology (with one twist: the particles need to be capable of moving backward and forward in time). This is an unusual and unpersuasive interpretation.
I thought the best part of the book were the late chapters criticizing “quantum theology” – some recent ideas about accommodating religion and science. I agree with Stenger that attempts to locate divine action in emergent phenomena or in subtle manipulation of quantum outcomes are fraught with difficulty. He admits it’s possible we could have a deist God if we accept that this God created an indeterministic cosmos and was willing “play dice.” Such a God, of course, isn’t very attractive to those who yearn for a more traditional deity. But even here Stenger’s own view is that there are natural accounts of the birth of the universe which do away with the need for a creator.
Stenger doesn’t devote significant space to the idea of the multiverse, although there are an increasing number of physical and cosmological theories which suggest its existence. While I agree with most of Stenger’s criticisms of theology, I think the multiverse is the one conceptual place where there’s the potential for a naturalistic worldview to make contact with a (non-traditional) notion of God: a transcendent and creative entity of which we are but a small part.
Rating
Quantum mechanics is strange and it gives us a view of the world that is against common sense. This weirdness has led gurus and the religious to make absurd claims about how quantum mechanics ‘proves’ their beliefs. Using established scientific theories and hard-hitting analyses, Stenger shows how the claims of the gurus and religious are void of any truth. He explains what quantum physics says, and what it does not. ‘Quantum Gods’ is a fascinating science book, as well as a useful guide for debunking new age nonsense.
Rating
Of the spate of books published in recent years debunking the notion of a personal god (and some others), none was better than Victor J. Stenger’s God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007), which I highly recommend. Here Professor Stenger, who is a philosopher and a physicist, goes after the idea that quantum indeterminacy is somehow supportive of the notion that we have “cosmic consciousness” in our finite little brains.
By the by, Stenger also wishes to discredit the idea that there can be a God, such as the “omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Judeo-Christian-Islamic God who is regularly fooling around with the laws of nature without our knowing it. “But he could surreptitiously intervene to prevent many diseases and catastrophes, so the fact that he does not also counts against his existence.” Stenger does allow that the deist God of the Enlightenment is marginally possible but that “science has no reason to introduce into its explanatory systems” such a God. (pp. 261-262)
Okay the mainstream notion of God is dead and buried. Still alive and well somewhere outside of time and space is the new deist God that set things in motion and then retired to examine his navel. Well, even the God of Jehovah presumably didn’t have a navel. Anyway, this deist God included in the structure of the universe “a high element of chance.” Stenger then follows Hume in concluding that events are either caused or are random, which effectively destroys the quaint notion of free will. However, in keeping with ideas from string theory and other models from contemporary physics, Stenger posits that “the universe…had a spontaneous, uncaused, natural origin from a state of chaos equivalent to ‘nothing’ [which] agrees with all the data.” He even presumes to answer the monumental query of philosophers, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” His answer: “‘something’ is more natural than ‘nothing’.” (pp. 262-263)
More interesting than these assertions to me is Stenger’s curiously postmodern statement that “The laws of physics were not handed down from above but are human inventions. They take the form they do in order to guarantee that they describe observations invariant to any particular point of view.” (p. 262) His explanation however, coming as it does from the world of particle physics, was not intelligible to this uninitiated reader. I wish it were.
You may notice that I am quoting so far entirely from near the end of the book. This is because most of the book is a kind of Particle Physics 101 laying the groundwork for Stenger’s conclusions as mentioned above. Consequently I was not as enamored of this book as I was of his previous. My guess is that he felt he needed to follow up on the success of “God: The Failed Hypothesis” and didn’t have all that much new to say. What he does say is profound (as usual in my not so humble opinion) but hardly needs an entire book to say it. I think the reader who has already read a number of books on particle physics, relativity and string theory might get the meat of this book by reading Michael Shermer’s excellent Foreword which he entitles “Quantum Flapdoodle and other Flummery” (which says it all, really) and Stenger’s Preface, and a few selected chapters beginning with Chapter 1, and perhaps skipping to Chapter 14.
Incidentally, one of Stenger’s contentions in Chapter 1 “Belief and Nonbelief in America” is that a much larger percentage of Americans believe in a deist sort of God than in the literal God of Abraham. I hope he is right because the deist God kills no first born sons nor does he send non-believers to eternal hell and damnation.
Let me close with this quote from page 239 which I think sums up Stenger’s position very well: “In this and in previous books I have tried to show that both observational data and mathematical theory demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that no spirit world exists. The universe is truly comprehensible as a purely material system.”
Rating
I am quickly becoming a fan of dr. Stenger. This is the 4th book I have read by him and is one of the best. Despite what the pro-spiritualist people that gave this book a 1 (lol), it is a great read.
Its main audience is skeptics and it attempts to address many of the same ideas Michael Shermer does (who ironically wrote the forward). Some of the topics discussed is creationism, deism, “quantum spirituality”, and the place in which God dwells. If you enjoy these types of books, I suggest this one.