Stenger is remembered for at least two particular things:
First, his Atheist bumper-sticker slogan:
"Science flies to the moon; religion flies into buildings."
And second, his book titled, "God, The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist", which I reviewed here.
For the terminally uncritical, these two bits entitled Stenger to the appellation, "Fifth Horseman". And his fans are heaping glory on his memory now after his death. Stenger was as prejudiced toward both Scientism and Philosophical Materialism as any other Atheist-scientist-Materialist-evangelist. That his conflation of religion with terrorism shows that, and plainly so. Yet this prejudice, hatefully stated, is seized upon by many Atheists as Truth, in the religion which actually claims, "No Truth". In reality, the anti-intellectualism which exists in the Scientistic worldview comes to express itself in hate speech, an indulgence with which Stenger was comfortable.
In his book, Stenger refers to the symmetry breaking hypothesis origins theory as if it were Truth, immutable. But unfortunately for him, symmetry is now a defeated shell of a scientific hypothesis, being eviscerated by the complete lack of complementary particles found at the CERN high energy particle accelerator. And it is entirely possible that the entire pursuit of particle-sifting from the shards of particle collision is a fantasy, not a science.
So when he makes the claim that the laws of physics came from nothing in the same manner as mass came from nothing, he has barked up a tree which is now decayed into sawdust by science itself. And that is the function of science, to produce tentative factoids, contingent upon the limitations of current technology and the current knowledge of limited intellectual power.
The problem for Scientism is that its Truth claims are frequently nuked by the progression of science itself. It's as if the religion has been created specifically to be falsified under its own worship of science as the path to Truth.
But Stenger also failed to appreciate the utility of philosophy in reining in the abuses of Scientism. If he had had any respect for the Philosophy of Science (under which real science is done), he would have had to admit to Popper's falsification boundary as a limitation to the purview of science. By not accepting that limitation, or perhaps any limitation at all, for scientific ability to produce incorrigible Truth, Stenger became a religionist, even as he scorned religion.
And that is his biggest failure.
