Garry Dobbins, a philosophical rabble-rouser who is my friend and colleague at Stevens, and I debated the question above on October 21 in front of a couple dozen students and a handful of faculty. I was raised Catholic but have been an agnostic since I was 12 or, except for brief periods of weakness. So I took the skeptical position, offering reasons why people don’t need God or associated ideas, like heaven. For those poor souls who couldn’t make the event, here are 10 reasons not to believe:

1. 9/11. Israel versus Palestine. Pakistan versus India. The US versus the Taliban Sri Lanka. Northern Ireland. The Crusades. The Inquisition. Jihads. I.e., religious wars. Too many people have killed and been killed in the name of God. Religion causes more conflict than it quells.

2. Childhood cancer. Tsunamis. Earthquakes. If God is all-powerful and loves us, why do bad things happen to totally innocent people? This is the problem of evil. No theology has ever answered this question adequately. The philosopher of religion Huston Smith calls the problem of evil “the shoal on which all theologies founder.”

3. Santa Claus. Grown-ups smile at childrens’ belief in Santa Claus, who tallies up our niceness and naughtiness and rewards us accordingly. But a just God who sends us to heaven or hell depending on how we behave is no more plausible than Santa Claus.

4. Religious morality is a contradiction in terms. The Bible’s commandment “Thou Shalt Not Kill” refers only to Israelites killing other Israelites. People outside of the tribe are fair game. In other words, there is one set of moral rules for members of your group and another set for outsiders. (My friend Susan Schept, who attended my debate with Garry, objects strongly to this interpretation, which I’ve borrowed from other scholars.)

5. “The scandal of particularity.” This is a theological term for the notion that God gives some people special treatment. He parts the Red Sea for Moses and his people and lets the Egyptians drown. The idea that God plays favorites, which fuels so much religious intolerance and bloodshed, is one of the worst ideas that humans have ever invented.

6. Heaven can wait. Forever. Heaven is a fantasy that our ancestors invented to console themselves because life was often so awful. Belief in an afterlife distracts from living as well as we can in this life. It also motivates religious fanatics to do really dumb things, like flying a jumbo jet into a skyscraper.

7. The Man in the Moon. Scientists have compiled evidence that our intuitions of God stem from our innate tendency toward anthropomorphism, toward imputing human attributes to non-human things. Just as we discern the man in the moon, so we see God in clouds, shrouds, and all of nature.

8. We don’t need God to be good! Some believers claim that without religion we’d descend into savagery. But natural selection has embedded capacities for kindness and fairness in all primates, including humans. These moral instincts–plus our reason, which helps us see the wisdom of the golden rule–are all we need to get along with each other.

9. Shakespeare beats the Bible. The arts can help us appreciate the mystery of existence without all the ideological baggage and mumbo jumbo that comes with religion. Read Hamlet rather than Genesis, go to a museum, not a church.

10. Save yourself! Just as heaven distracts us from making this life better, so does the notion of a savior or messiah who will supposedly save us. It’s time for us to grow up and accept responsibility for saving ourselves.

We need more energy! That urgent message kept bursting through a panel discussion at Stevens on October 14 on “Fossil Fuels in the Year 2050.” The panel featured Paul Winstanley, Director of Energy Initiatives here at Stevens, as well as experts from the Department of Energy, Penn State and Shell Oil. The discussion, sponsored by Stevens, Discover and Shell, was moderated by Corey Powell, editor of Discover magazine and an old buddy.

Oil and other fossil fuels can’t last forever, these experts agreed. We need other sources of energy. But what? The panel brought up the usual alternatives–solar, wind, biofuels, nuclear fission–as well as one not mentioned much lately: fusion. You all know the difference between fission and fusion, right? In fission a heavy atom, such as uranium or plutonium, splits apart, releasing energy that triggers more fission and hence a chain reaction. The bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fission bombs. All the world’s nuclear-energy reactors–like Indian Point, just a few miles south of where I live on the Hudson River—exploit fission.

In fusion, two light atoms, such as hydrogen, slam together, forming a heavier atom and releasing energy. Fusion is a much, much more potent source of energy than fission. The sun is a giant fusion reactor, which means in a sense that we are already living in a fusion-energy world. But so far the only “successful” fusion technology is the so-called hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb, which makes the fission bombs that we dropped on Japan look like firecrackers.

For more than 50 years, physicists have sought to harness fusion to create energy-producing reactors, which in principle could solve all our energy needs. What is the status of fusion research? Can it help us kick our addiction to fossil fuels? True believers keep promising that fusion will solve all our problems, delivering energy “too cheap to meter,” to use one famous pitch. But so far, no fusion reactor has come close to producing more energy than it consumes. Skeptics say it’s time to pull the plug on fusion research, which is always promising… and promising, and promising.

If you want the real scoop on fusion, come to the next talk of the Center for Science Writings, to be held Wednesday, October 28–that’s today!–at 4 p.m., in the Babbio Center, Room 122. The speaker will be Charles Seife, a professor of journalism at NYU and author of several acclaimed books on physics. His latest, “Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking,” Bethe, Edward Teller—the real-life model for crazy Dr. Strangelove–and other titans of twentieth century physics. Maybe Seife will help us decide whether fusion energy is more moonshine than sunshine.