It was with great anticipation that I opened this book, searching for details of the scientific experiment that proved that God does not exist. What was the experimental procedure? What did the distribution of data points look like? What were the error bars? Was it a 2-sigma or 3-sigma proof? Disappointment soon followed: there was no description of any such experiment.

So what justifies the book’s bold subtitle? What the book in fact contains is a melange of homespun philosophy, amateur biblical interpretation and a smattering of scientific data served up under the pretence of being a proof. All this despite the fact that Immanuel Kant and David Hume emphasized two centuries ago that attempts to conclusively prove either the existence or non-existence of God by such reasoning could not work.

While scientific understanding has increased vastly since then, the scientific method has not changed; it has the same strengths and weaknesses, and the same limited domain of application. The author is thus committing a category error in trying to use scientific proof in areas where it simply does not apply.

Victor Stenger, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Hawaii, seems to have been drawn into this fundamentally misleading position by responding to authors who claim that they have proved scientifically that God does exist. But the fact that those writers have made the error of claiming that science can prove what it cannot does not justify Stenger in making what is essentially the same mistake. Both groups attempt to claim the mantle of science in order to buttress their faith positions. Both demonstrate the lack of a good philosophical training that should be essential for today’s scientists.

Stenger summarizes his eight arguments for the non-existence of God on pages 229–231 (“Gods who disagree with the data”). I will respond briefly to each of the points he makes.

• There are no signs of direct design in the natural universe
Despite the prominence of the intelligent design lobby, direct design by a creator is not a serious scientific or philosophical proposal. Indeed, most competent scientist-theologians agree that evolution took place through natural selection. Thus the lack of evidence of design does not contradict the religious view as it refers to issues of mechanism that have no theological implications either way.

• The mind is determined by physical processes; there is no scientific evidence for a soul
This is the strongest argument the author puts forward for the non-existence of God as it relates directly to a number of religious claims and is plausible in terms of present-day neuroscience. However, it is certainly not a scientific proof, as we have not solved the hard problem of consciousness, and do not even know how to begin tackling it.

• No independent evidence exists for the miracles claimed in the scriptures
Here, Stenger undertakes an exercise in exegesis, based on a literalist reading of the Bible. This is not science in any ordinary sense of the word.

• The universe came into being by natural processes (or, as Stenger puts it, “no violations of physical laws were required to produce the universe”)
Here, Stenger puts forward his own debatable and unproven model of the creation of the universe, based on ideas from James Hartle and Stephen Hawking. This speculative theory, which apparently presumes that the laws of physics existed in some Platonic domain before space and time came into being, does not deal with the ultimate issues of creation or existence, and is certainly not proven science.

• The universe is not congenial to human life (“the universe is wasteful of time, space, and matter from a human perspective”)
This argument is not based on science; rather it is an emotional argument centred on the author’s personal opinions. “Wasteful” is not a scientific concept, nor can it lead to scientific conclusions. Stenger does not take seriously the arguments of John Barrow, Martin Rees, Steven Weinberg and others that only a very small region of the physical parameter space allows life to exist, which many scientists feel requires an explanation.

• Religious revelations have not been empirically confirmed or given us any new insight
This is an exercise in psychology and religious interpretation that has nothing to do with science. Stenger presents nothing here that a social scientist would recognize as valid data.

• Humans define morals and values for themselves
Despite Stenger’s disclaimer that he is not propounding moral relativism, this is indeed a moral-relativist position. While his claim is in part correct in describing how humans behave, it does not illuminate the sources of ethical right and wrong. Furthermore, it undermines any claim to the existence of an objective morality that all humans share, which the author implicitly claims to be the case in his subsequent argument.

• The existence of evil
Stenger claims that it is a scientific fact that evil exists, and that this is incompatible with the usual monotheistic idea of God. So what is the experiment that establishes evil as a scientific fact? There is none, as science does not comprehend the concepts of “right” and “wrong” – there are no units (“milli-Hitlers”) for degrees of evil. Hence this is an ethical claim falsely dressed up as science. But this argument does show a belief in absolute standards of right and wrong, in agreement with my own belief that there is a moral reality underlying the universe.

All these points constitute acceptable philosophical argument for the non-existence of God, but none of them amount to a genuine scientific proof. Overstating what science can do is bad for science, as it undermines both its integrity and its believability. It is also a mistake to present the public with a false dichotomy between science and religion, because this will unnecessarily tend to fuel an antiscientific backlash in wider society.

The aim of the book is to apply scientific-like reasoning to issues of ultimate reality. But this is not new: it has been developed in depth by philosopher-theologians such as Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne and Nancey Murphy, whose writings on this topic are ignored by the author. Indeed these individuals have developed such an approach to a much more sophisticated level than is apparent in Stenger’s book. The author quotes Hume’s advice to be sceptical in all things, but does not take this advice to heart in relation to his own overblown claims for the power of science.