Talk:Victor J. Stenger/Archive 1

NPOV
There are a number of POV edits, mostly from User:NBeale who studied under theologian, John Polkinghorne and is proud of it.

"However the only peer-reviewed publication of the MonkeyGod model is in Philo an expressly anti-theist philosophical journal published by the Center for Inquiry where Stenger is a Fellow, and this article has only been cited once, by Stenger himself[8]."

The Center of Enquiry is a secular and scientific organisation. Some guests may be critical of religion, but that does make make the journal anti-theist. The views expressed in their journal may not represent those of the Center for Inquiry.

"This work has not been peer-reviewed and its validity is controversial."

Where is the reference for the lack of peer-review? Who regards the work as "controversial"?

Blind designer 19:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I have "fixed" the Philo reference with (though our mutual friend may disagree). Truthfully I'm not too fussed if Monkeygod is spiked. Ttiotsw 20:28, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Philo is very explicit about it's anti-Theistic stance, on its official website. The complete lack of 3rd party citations of Monkeygod is a matter of public record. If people conclude from this that it is Junk science that is a matter for their intelligence. Pitting Stenger against Martin Rees is an act of desparation! NBeale 22:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I have not read Philo so must take what I see at face value or find a reference that contradicts my view. From their web site they state that they also...."To facilitate discussion and debate, Philo also publishes defenses of theism and criticisms of naturalism". So that isn't really a biased publication any more than a biology publication would be anti-Bible. I don't feel it is neutral to call it outright anti-theist especially given they have Alvin Plantinga on the editorial board. As for MonkeyGod I care neither here nor there on it; It is listed, it has supporters and detractors (it's probably out of date too). Martin Rees has more variables which fit a particular worldview (more importantly fit an Intelligent Design worldview) in a way which could be argued is the same magical that is alluded to in the aphorism that goes, "...a suitably advanced science..." so I argue that it is still a desperate leap of faith to go from a proposed design to the specific designer of whose worship we indicate by the term "theism" and of whose denial you indicate by the the word anti-theism. Ttiotsw 06:33, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Please define the scope of the debate
Hi. Could somebody please spell out what the POV objection exactly is about. I'm having a hard time correlating the discussion here to the actual article. --Amit 20:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess nobody's watching this page anymore. -- Amit 05:06, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm going to remove the tag if nobody comments. --Amit 18:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That's fine - the page *is* watched, though for me I only cue on anomalies on my watchlists. Ttiotsw 07:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Removed tag. Amit 09:07, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Free will
Has Victor Stenger taken a definitive position on (libertarian) free-will? If so, shouldn't that be mentioned in the article?  Amit @  Talk  10:40, 1 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Well here has stuff but I wouldn't call it definitive. Ttiotsw 11:27, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I read somewhere that he has said that a scientific, non-theological explanation of free-will, assuming it exists, will someday be found. You think that can be included, if I can find the source?  Amit @  Talk  11:34, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I added it as best as I could recall ... couldn't find the source again.  Amit @  Talk  06:15, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Nothing
There is nothing about Stenger's background in the article, other than the fact of his place of birth in America. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.70.245 (talk) 09:08, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The name "Stenger" is not in Hungarian or Lithuanian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.72.219 (talk) 11:00, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * User:TheActualLukeSky put in "Former Roman Catholics" but without proof. Certainly Stenger is an atheist now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.123.215.180 (talk) 11:35, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Stenger, TheActualLukeSky, Richard Dawkins and Laurence Boyce all make edits favourable to each other. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.123.215.180 (talk) 11:43, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Request for Citations
I have cleaned up the article to fix broken links, update information etc.

There are a couple of statements here that I have had difficulty finding appropriate references for.

Can anybody help with references for the following statements:
 * The book God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist is claimed as being a New York Times best seller in 2007 in many sources but they are not independent. So I checked the NYT archives for every best-seller list for every week of 2007, and I could not find it there. So at the moment I have removed it. Can anybody suggest a suitable approach to verify this?
 * Stenger's own sites say that he is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Hawai'i and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado. But those Universitys' web sites do not list him. U-Hawai'i has a different Victor Senger (middle name Andrew, not John) who is a Professor of Medicine at Manoa, but that is not this Victor Stenger. Again, can somebody suggest how to verify these posts?--Gronk Oz (talk) 09:13, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

William Lane Craig
W L Craig is a professor of philosophy, he is a philosopher. Victor Stenger is a philosopher. Although W L Craig was an apologist too, it is philosophy that the two debated. 156.22.3.1 (talk) 04:33, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Fine-Tuning
Thanks to Plumbago for adding Stenger's (non-peer-reviewed) response to Luke Barnes' critique. I don't know whether it's worth saying that Stenger broadly agrees with Barnes' review of the literature on fine-tuning and states that his "intent was to investigate the claim found in much theistic literature that carbon-based life, as we know it, would be impossible if any one of thirty or so parameters of physics and cosmology changed by an infinitesimal amount" (italics added). Of course no-one AFAIK in the fine-tuning camp claims that infinitesimal changes in any of N parameters would make carbon-based life impossible, but almost everyone agrees that pretty small changes would. On reflection I don't think it belongs in the article but it worth recording here, together with my thanks. NBeale (talk) 17:40, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

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