God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (49 page)

40
. Hayden Ebbem et al., “Maria's Near-Death Experience: Waiting for the other Shoe to Drop,”
Skeptical Inquirer
20, no. 4 (1996): 27–33.

41
. Jeffrey P. Bishop and Victor J. Stenger, “Retroactive Prayer: Lots of History, Not Much Mystery, No Science,”
British Medical Journal
329 (2004): 1444–46; “Religion and Health,” exchange with Andrew Weaver and Larry Dossey,
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/relig.html
(accessed June 9, 2011).

42
. Larry Dossey,
Recovering the Soul: A Scientific and Spiritual Search
(New York: Bantam Books, 1989).

43
. Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper,
Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind
(Palo Alto, CA: William James Center for Consciousness Studies, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, 1999).

44
. Blackmore,
Dying to Live
, pp. 131–32.

45
. Ring and Cooper,
Mindsight
.

46
. Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry,
Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences
(New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

47
. Ibid.

48
. Mark Fox,
Religion, Spirituality, and the Near-Death Experience
(New York: Routledge, 2003).

49
. Internet Infidels, Secular Web,
http://www.infidels.org/infidels/
(accessed December 11, 2009).

50
. Keith Augustine, “Does Paranormal Perception Occur in Near-Death Experiences?”
Journal of Near-Death Studies
25, no. 4 (2007): 203–36; “Near-Death Experiences with Hallucinatory Features,”
Journal of Near-Death Studies
26, no. 1 (2007): 3–31; “Psychophysiological and Cultural Correlates Undermining a Survivalist Interpretation of Near-Death Experiences,”
Journal of Near-Death Studies
26, no. 2 (2007): 89–125. See following papers in each volume, which present criticisms and Augustine's responses to these criticisms.

51
. Keith Augustine, “Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences,” Secular Web,
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html#veridical
(accessed January 26, 2011).

52
. Dannion Brinkley and Paul Perry,
Saved by the Light: The True Story of a Man Who Died Twice and the Profound Revelations He Received
(New York: Villard Books, 1994).

53
.
Wikipedia
,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saved_by_the_Light
(accessed December 9, 2009).

54
. Morey Bernstein,
The Search for Bridey Murphy
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956).

55
. Terence Hines, ed.
Pseudoscience and the Paranormal: A Critical Examination of the Evidence
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988); Martin Gardner,
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
(New York: Dover, 1957); James Alcock, “Psychology and Near-Death Experiences,”
Skeptical Inquirer
3, no. 3 (1978): 25–41.

56
. Chopra,
Life after Death: The Burden of Proof
, pp. 72–73.

57
. Ian Stevenson,
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation
, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974).

58
. Ian Stevenson,
Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects
, 2 vols. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997).

59
. Leonard Angel, “
Reincarnation and Biology
(Book Review),”
Skeptic
9, no. 3 (2002): 86–90.

60
. Victor J. Stenger,
Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World beyond the Senses
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990), pp. 276–305.

61
. Paul Kurtz,
The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986).

62
. Daryl J. Bem, “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
100, no. 3 (2011): 407–25.

63
. Victor J. Stenger,
Timeless Reality: Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).

64
. Erik-Jan Wagenmakers et al., “Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi: Comment on Bem,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
100, no. 3 (2011): 426–32.

65
. Jeffrey N. Rouder and Richard D. Morey, “A Bayes Factor Meta-Analysis of Bem's ESP Claim,”
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
18, no. 4 (May 15, 2011): 682–89,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/q113m61462793241/
(accessed June 22, 2011).

66
. Ben Goldacre quoted in Kendrick Frazier, “Journal That Published Bem's Paper Rejects Attempt to Replicate It,”
Skeptical Inquirer
35, no. 4 (2011): 7.

67
. James E. Alcock, “Back from the Future: Parapsychology and the Bem Affair,”
Skeptical Inquirer
35, no. 2 (2011): 31–39.

68
. Joseph Banks Rhine,
Extra-Sensory Perception
(Boston, MA: Boston Society for Psychic Research, 1934), p. 210.

69
. Alcock, “Back from the Future,” p. 31.

70
. Even more often, considering the “file-drawer effect” in which negative results are
often not published because they aren't interesting. In fact, negative results are just as important as positive results in science.

71
. David H. Freedman, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science,”
Atlantic
(November 2010): 76–86.

72
. Dean I. Radin,
The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena
(New York: HarperEdge, 1997).

73
. I. J. Good, “Where Has the Billion Trillion Gone?”
Nature
389, no. 6653 (1997): 806–807; Douglas M. Stokes, “The Shrinking Filedrawer: On the Validity of Statistical Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology,”
Skeptical Inquirer
35, no. 3 (2001): 22–25.

74
. Frank J. Tipler,
The Physics of Christianity
(New York: Doubleday, 2007).

75
. Joe Nickell,
Inquest on the Shroud of Turin: Latest Scientific Findings
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), pp. 149–50.

76
. Normally an electron and proton can interact, producing a neutrino and neutron. However, here Tipler is proposing complete annihilation into neutrinos alone.

77
. Ernan McMullin, “From Matter to Materialism and (Almost) Back,” in
Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics
, ed. Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 23.

78
. Clifford M. Will,
Was Einstein Right? Putting General Relativity to the Test
(New York: Basic Books, 1986), chapter 4.

79
. Muslims believe that God eventually releases everyone from hell.

80
.
Catechism of the Catholic Church
, rev. ed. (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999), pp. 1030–32.

81
. As I write this, the latest prediction for the end of the world—May 12, 2011, by Oakland, California, preacher Harold Camping—had not materialized.

82
. Richard H. Jones,
Piercing the Veil: Comparing Science and Mysticism as Ways of Knowing Reality
(New York: Jackson Square Books, 2010).

83
. Ibid., pp. 63–76.

84
. Ibid., p. 23.

85
. Ibid., p. 28.

10. BEYOND EVOLUTION

1
. Dinesh D'Souza,
Life after Death: The Evidence
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 2009), pp. 165–83.

2
. Ibid., pp. 167–68.

3
. Ibid., pp. 171–72.

4
. Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
(New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1871).

5
. Thomas Henry Huxley,
Evolution and Ethics
(London and New York: Macmillan, 1893).

6
. Matt Ridley,
The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation
(New York: Viking, 1997); Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson,
Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Leonard D. Katz,
Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
(Thorverton, UK; Bowling Green, OH: Imprint Academic, 2000); Michael Shermer,
The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule
(New York: Times Books, 2004); M. Rutherford, “The Evolution of Morality,”
Goundings
1 (2007). For more information and references see the website Evolution of Morality,
http://www1.umn.edu/ships/evolutionofmorality/
(accessed February 6, 2011).

7
. Richard Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
, new ed. (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

8
. George C. Williams,
Adaption and Natural Selection
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966).

9
. Robert Trivers, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,”
Quarterly Review of Biology
46 (1971): 35–57.

10
. Francis S. Collins,
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
(New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 28.

11
. D'Souza,
Life after Death: The Evidence
, pp. 176–77.

12
. Ibid., p. 180.

13
. Ibid., p. 172.

14
. Michael Shermer,
The Science of Good and Evil
, pp. 235–36.

15
. A. N. Franzblau, “Religious Belief and Character among Jewish Adolescents,”
Teachers College Contributions to Education
, no. 634 (1934).

16
. Murray G. Ross,
Religious Beliefs of Youth
(New York: Association Press, 1950).

17
. Travis Hirschi and Rodney Stark, “Hellfire and Delinquency,”
Social Problems
17 (1969): 202–13.

18
. R. E. Smith et al., “Faith without Works: Jesus People, Resistance to Temptation, and Altruism,”
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
5 (1975): 320–30.

19
. David M. Wulff,
Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Views
(New York: Wiley, 1991).

20
. Gregory S. Paul, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look,”
Journal of Religion & Society
7 (2005), online at
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf
(accessed February 5, 2011).

21
. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart,
Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide
, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

22
. Phil Zuckerman,
Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment
(New York: New York University Press, 2008).

23
. Kimberly Blaker, “The Social Implications of Armageddon,” in
The Fundamentals of
Extremism: The Christian Right in America
, ed. Kimberly Blaker (New Boston, MI: New Boston Books, 2003), pp. 114–53.

24
. Dwight M. Donaldson,
Studies in Muslim Ethics
(London: SPCK, 1953), p. 25. W. A. Spooner, “The Golden Rule,” in
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics
, ed. James Hastings (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914), pp. 310–12.

26
. Diogenes Laërtus,
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
, vol. 1, p. 39.

27
. Richard Jasnow,
A Late Period Hieratic Wisdom Text: P. Brooklyn P. 47.218.135
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 85.

28
. Elizabeth Anderson, “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” in
Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life
, ed. Louise M. Antony (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 215–30.

29
. For a well-documented recent example in Mormonism, see Jon Krakauer,
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
(New York: Doubleday, 2003).

30
. Ibid., p. 222.

31
. D'Souza,
Life after Death: The Evidence
, p. 189.

32
. Barbara Hagerty, “Nun Excommunicated for Allowing Abortion,” National Public Radio, May 19, 2010.

33
. Hector Avalos,
Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005), p. 326.