The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

32

1. Conservation of energy was not immediately recognized but was already implicit in Newton’s laws of mechanics.

33

2. Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), Chapter 29.

34

3. It is commonly thought that only nuclear reactions convert between rest and kinetic energy. This also happens in chemical reactions. However, the changes in the masses of the reactants in that case are too small to be generally noticed.

35

4. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (New York: Bantam, 1988), Chapter 17.

36

5. Technically, the total energy of the universe cannot be defined for all possible situations in general relativity. However, in V. Faraoni and F. I. Cooperstock, “On the Total Energy of Open Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Universes,” Astrophysical Journal 587 (2003): 483–486, it is shown that the total energy of the universe can be defined for the most common types of cosmologies and is zero in these cases. This included the case where the density is critical.

37

6. Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1997).

38

7. The mathematical derivation of the curves on this plot is given in Appendix C of Victor J. Stenger, Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 356–357.

39

8. The mathematical proof of this is given in Appendix A, Stenger, Has Science Found God? pp. 351–353.

40

9. Pope Pius XII, “The Proofs for Existence of God in the Light of Modern Natural Science,” Address by Pope Pius XII to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, November 22, 1951, reprinted as “Modern Science and the Existence of God,” Catholic Mind 49 (1972): 182–192.

41

10. William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

42

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

43

12. Stephen W. Hawking and Roger Penrose, “The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series A, 314 (1970): 529–548.

44

13. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 50.

45

14. Keith Parsons, “Is There a Case for Christian Theism?” In Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists & Atheists, J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books,