The Fifth Horseman: The Insights of Victor Stenger (1935–2014)

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Dr. Victor Stenger lecturing on science and religion at the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech in 2003.

Posted on Sep. 20, 2014 by Michael Shermer

Victor J. Stenger was a particle physicist, philosopher, author, skeptic, and friend. I first came across his name shortly after we founded Skeptic magazine in 1992 when I read his 1990 book Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses (Prometheus Books), for which “psychic” Uri Geller sued (the case was dismissed and Geller was ordered to pay legal fees of nearly $50,000). Stenger’s 1995 book, The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology, was especially helpful to us as we dealt with the burgeoning interest in the topic of quantum consciousness and the New Age fascination with the field as a way of using one of the most well-developed and thoroughly tested fields in all of science to prop up supernatural and paranormal beliefs with sciency sounding terms (the very definition of pseudoscience).

Victor was especially helpful to me in assessing the technical claims of the quantum consciousness proponents, such as those featured in the wildly popular film What the Bleep Do We Know?! It was a well produced film (I saw it in Portland with the producers after we were both on a radio show), but I never imagined it would become the big hit it did, given the esoteric nature of its subject: quantum physics and consciousness. But it had that New Agey uplifting anything-is-possible-if-you-wish-it-so feel. It included a number of talking head physicists, such as University of Oregon quantum physicist Amit Goswami, who proclaimed: “The material world around us is nothing but possible movements of consciousness. I am choosing moment by moment my experience. Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies.” In my Scientific American column on the film I challenged him to “leap out of a 20-story building and consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground’s tendencies.”

Here’s the main argument and Stenger’s explanation for why it is wrong. Inside our neurons are tiny hollow microtubules that act like structural scaffolding. Proponents of quantum consciousness suggest that something inside the microtubules may initiate a wave function collapse that leads to the quantum coherence of atoms, causing neurotransmitters to be released into the synapses between neurons and thus triggering them to fire in a uniform pattern, thereby creating thought and consciousness. Since a wave function collapse can only come about when an atom is “observed” (i.e., affected in any way by something else), the belief is that “mind” may be the observer in a recursive loop from atoms to molecules to neurons to thought to consciousness to mind to atoms. Vic explained to me that for a system to be described quantum mechanically the system’s typical mass m, speed v, and distance d must be on the order of Planck’s constant h. “If mvd is much greater than h, then the system probably can be treated classically.” According to Vic, the mass of neural transmitter molecules and their speed across the distance of the synapse are about three orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential. As he said, “the notion that we can control reality by merely thinking about it is nowhere implied by quantum mechanics and nowhere indicated by any scientific data.” Here is my favorite quote from Stenger on the subject:

Quantum mechanics is weird. But, it does not follow that everything weird is quantum mechanics.

You can read Victor’s many articles on this topic (and others) here: http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/meta.html

http://www.skeptic.com/insight/the-fifth-horseman-the-insights-of-victor-stenger-1935-2014/

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1. I am a huge Victor Stenger fan and am very sad about his death.

He was one of the good folks who brought atheism to the forefront with his passion for science. He was a prolific author who wrote mainly about the confluence of physics and religion.

He will be sadly missed.
R&K

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2. Yes, I thought of you when his death was announced.

You've convinced me to check out some of his writings.

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3. "God: The Failed Hypothesis" is pretty damned good and easy for non-science majors.

Some of his other books get pretty deep into physics. I really like "The Comprehensible Cosmos" but that one is not for the faint of heart. I also have "Quantum Gods" which utterly takes down quantum woo-woo, like that of that lunatic Depak Chopra.

His "God: The Failed Hypothesis" claims that there is a rational proof that gods do not exist. (Not a deist God, but ones people worship.) My copy is the paper back which has a Foreward written by Christopher Hitchens, who Stenger apparently convinced of his argument although Hitchens had expressed some previous doubt concerning it.

He talks about it during the justifiably famous two hour "Four Horsemen" discussion (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens -- I believe it was filmed at Hitchens' home in DC.)

Here:

Of course, they are quaffing cocktails and Hitch is smoking.

Here's a CFI interview with Stenger, sadly done by a rather poor interviewer.

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4. Wait, he admits to the possibility of a Deist God?

The Watchmaker who makes the watch and lets it run?

Or, that he cannot disprove that hypothesis?

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5. The latter.

His argument is that one can credibly disprove something like a Christian God, because we can credibly claim that there are no gods diddling with the universe. But if there was a deist god, there's not much to say about it.

That would be my take on it as well.

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6. Well, if there is a deist god who created all at the start,

that raises the question of what kind of god it was who let it be. Hence, theology.

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7. Good question, my friend.

But I prefer the option of no gods necessary, therefore no theology necessary.

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8. I don't blame you.

Still, I find it a nagging question.