Victor J. Stenger · 287 pages
Rating: (7.1K votes)
“The most fundamental laws of physics are not restrictions on the behaviour of matter. Rather, they are restrictions on the way physicists may describe that behaviour.”
“The claim that the universe *began* with the big bang has no basis in current physical and cosmological knowledge. The observations confirming the big bang do not rule out the possibility of a prior universe.”
“We have yet to encounter an observable astronomical phenomenon that require a supernatural element to be added to a model in order to describe the even...Observations in cosmology look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.”
“The complex order we now observe [in the universe] could *not* have been the result of any initial design built into the universe at the so-called creation. The universe preserves no record of what went on before the big bang. The Creator, if he existed, left no imprint. Thus he might as well have been nonexistent.”
“Infinity...is used in physics simply as a shorthand for "a very big number.”
“The God of the gaps argument for God fails when a plausible scientific account for a gap in current knowledge can be given. I do not dispute that the exact nature of the origin of the universe remains a gap in scientific knowledge. But I deny that we are bereft of any conceivable way to account for that origin scientifically.”
“The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent.”
“Shura, I’m yours. You may not like it today, you may not want it tonight, you may wish for it all to be different now, but it remains, and I remain, as always, only yours. Nothing can change that. Not your wrath, your fists, your body or your death.”
“He who jumps may fall, but he may also fly.
It’s time to jump.”
“Every human generation has its own illusions with regard to civilization; some believe they are taking part in its upsurge, others that they are witnesses of its extinction. In fact, it always both flames and smolders and is extinguished, according to the place and the angle of view.”
“Countless as the sands of sea are human passions, and not all of them are alike, and all of them, base and noble alike, are at first obedient to man and only later on become his terrible masters.”
“Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow, Korogi says. But that's one thing I'll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow.”
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