In October 2006, Physics World published a review by Victor Stenger of Francis Collins' book "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief." The letter below together with five others commenting negatively on the review, were published under the heading "Religious Reactions" in the December issue. Interestingly, no response by Stenger was published.
Stenger very reasonably demands that Collins' book should have covered recent theories of cosmology and evolutionary psychology. However, one could reasonably argue in such a review that any physical theory that deals with energies higher than the current experimental limit of about 1 TeV - including those postulating space-time before the big bang - is at best tentative.
Stenger also claims that scientific experiments such as those considering the effect of prayer on health is evidence for the non-existence of God. This may be true for a Star Wars-type impersonal force, but surely not for Collins's Christian God, who will not be put to the test.
Finally, in dismissing Lewis as "an author of children's literature", Stenger may as well have chided Collins for learning physics from the bongo player Richard Feynman. Either he is so ignorant of the theological literature that he cannot make any authoritative claims about theology or he is being deliberately deceptive. Both undermine any claim that his review offers a balanced critique of a book with strong theological themes, or that the existence of God has been disproved by scientific means.
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