Presenter: BC Skeptics and SFU Department of Psychology
Title: Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe

Religious organizations are funding a media blitz to persuade people that the latest science proves the truth of their religion. However, as physicist Victor J. Stenger shows, nothing in modern science requires supernatural explanation. In fact, modern science argues against the existence of an active, personal creator. The personal God of Judeo Christian-Islamic tradition plays such an important role in events that he could not escape detection. He has not been found and there is no reason to assume he exists.

Those who claim evidence for intelligent design in the universe have made a number of fundamental scientific errors. God is not needed to explain the origin of the universe nor its laws and structure. Modern physics and cosmology point to an uncreated, self contained, fully material universe that is consistent with all known observations. Arguments that the universe is divinely "fine tuned" for life are based on a narrow and parochial view of what forms life might take.

Claims that positive effects of prayer and other types of spiritual intervention have been demonstrated in controlled scientific experiments collapse under critical scrutiny. None of these reports, nor the reports of evidence for psychic phenomena pass the normal tests that science applies to any extraordinary claim.

Attempts to reconcile Christianity with science have produced theologies that are in sharp conflict with the traditional teaching that evolution is guided and humans occupy a special place in the cosmos.

The universe is not populated by mysterious, incomprehensible forces that control our lives and destinies for some unseen purpose. Rather, aided by science, we control our own lives and define our own purpose.