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Jerry Coyne
182 quotes
“In other words, truth is simply what is: what exists in reality and can be verified by rational and independent observers.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What distinguishes knowledge is not certainty but evidence.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Claims of supernatural phenomena like the efficacy of prayer are rendered unfalsifiable by the assertion that “God will not be tested.” (Of course, if the tests had been successful, then testing God would have been fine!)”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the end, a theory that can’t be shown to be wrong can never be shown to be right.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Living with uncertainty is hard for many people, and is one of the reasons why people prefer religious truths that are presented as absolute.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Although scientists come in all faiths, including no faith at all, there is no Hindu science, no Muslim science, and no Jewish science. There is only science, combining brainpower from the whole world to produce one accepted body of knowledge. In contrast, there are thousands of religions, most differing profoundly in what they see as “true.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These (i. e., the statements of the Nicene Creed) are all empirical statements about reality: they are either true or false, even if some are hard to investigate. These claims, of course, absolutely conflict with those of other faiths. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Muslims believe that those who do so will spend eternity in hell. Doesn’t choosing among such faiths require a way to evaluate whether this dogma is true?”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can find some religions without creationism, but you can’t find creationism without religion.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The question to ask believers is this: “Does it really matter whether what you believe about God is true—or don’t you care?” If it does matter, then you must justify your beliefs; if it doesn’t, then you must justify belief itself.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My claim is this: science and religion are incompatible because they have different methods for getting knowledge about reality, have different ways of assessing the reliability of that knowledge, and, in the end, arrive at conflicting conclusions about the universe. “Knowledge” acquired by religion is at odds not only with scientific knowledge, but also with knowledge professed by other religions. In the end, religion’s methods, unlike those of science, are useless for understanding reality.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the end, religious investigations of “truth,” unlike those of science, are deeply dependent on confirmation bias. You start with what you were taught to believe, or what you want to believe, and then accept only those facts that support your prejudices. This is the basis for the theological practice of “apologetics,” designed to defend religion against counterarguments and disconfirming evidence....In contrast, science has no apologetics, for we test our conclusions by trying to find counterevidence.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most important component of the incompatibility between science and religion is religion’s dependence on faith.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Theologians intensely dislike the definition of faith as belief without—or in the face of—evidence, for that practice sounds irrational. But it surely is, as is any system that requires supporting a priori beliefs without good evidence. In religion, but not science, that kind of faith is seen as a virtue.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Blasphemy” and “heresy” are terms of religion, not science.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In fact, changes like the elimination of limbo don’t come from new information, but from secular currents in society that make church dogma seem insupportable or even barbaric.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as many churches don’t want to be seen as rejecting science, neither do they wish to lag too far behind public morality, and so they often tweak their religious “truths” to reflect the zeitgeist.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But all that changed when Darwin explained those designlike features by natural selection. The best evidence for God simply vanished.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One can’t read a great deal of theology without appreciating the mental dexterity of its practitioners when faced with hard problems. And as a scientist, I regret how much more we’d understand about nature had that dexterity been applied to science instead, or to any field involved in studying what’s real.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most of the world’s believers reject these claims (i. e., of Scientology, Mormonism, and Christian Science) as blatantly false. But that’s only because these three religions are fairly new. They were founded in the last two centuries, and we see their origin not as divine but as obvious fabrications of humans—in the case of Joseph Smith, of a con man. But if you look with equally critical eyes at the doctrines of older faiths, their tenets seem equally bizarre.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To a very large extent, which religion you accept and which you reject are accidents of birth. And after you’ve been religious for years, and surrounded by those who believe likewise, you become emotionally invested in your faith’s truth. This makes you more susceptible to confirmation bias and less likely to be skeptical about your beliefs.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The different claims among these faiths have consequences, for they’ve produce endless misery over the course of history....Clearly, religions aren’t incompatible only with science: they’re incompatible with one another....This farrago of conflicting and irresolvable claims about reality stands in stark contrast to science.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I am saying is two things. First, religion hasn’t obviously come closer to understanding the divine....I also claim that insofar as theology or religious beliefs do change within a faith, those changes are driven largely by either science or changes in secular culture....Religious morality, at least as promulgated by priests, rabbis, imams, and theologians, is usually one step behind secular morality.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The methodological conflicts between science and religion cannot be brokered, for faith has no reliable way to find truth.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our reliance on naturalism, then, is not an assumption decided in advance, but a result of experience—the experience of men like Darwin and Laplace who found that the only way forward was to posit natural rather than supernatural explanations. Because of this success, and the recurrent failure of supernaturalism to explain anything about the universe, naturalism is now taken for granted as the guiding principle of science.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you spend your life looking in vain for the Loch Ness Monster, stalking the lake with a camera, sounding it with sonar, and sending submersibles into its depths, and yet still find nothing, what is the more sensible view: to conclude provisionally that the monster simply isn’t there, or to throw up your hands and say, “It might be there; I’m not sure”? Most people would give the first response—unless they’re talking about God.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s important to realize that philosophical naturalism is, like atheism, a provisional view. It’s not the kind of worldview that says, “I know there is no god,” but the kind that says, “Until I see some evidence, I don’t accept the existence of gods.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science in fact has a lot to say about the supernatural. It can and has tested it, and so far has found no evidence for it....Indeed, over its history science has repeatedly investigated supernatural claims and, in principle, could find strong evidence for them. But that evidence hasn’t appeared.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Theists’ typical response to these failures (i. e., of prayer to affect rates of healing) is to say either “God won’t let himself be tested” or “That’s not what prayer is about: it’s simply a way to converse with God.” But you can bet that had these studies shown a large positive effect, the religious would be noisily flaunting this as evidence for God. The confirmation bias shown by accepting positive results but explaining away negative ones is an important difference between science and religion.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This shows what we already know: belief may arise by indoctrination or authority, but is often maintained by social utility. But if no conceivable evidence can shake your faith in a theistic God, then you’ve deliberately removed yourself from rational discourse. In other words, your faith has trumped science.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hume was right about one thing: to have real confidence in a miracle, one needs evidence—massive, well-documented, and either replicated or independently corroborated evidence from multiple and reliable sources. No religious miracle even comes close to meeting those standards.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the end, theistic evolution is not a useful compromise between science and religion. Insofar as it makes testable predictions, it has been falsified, and insofar as it makes claims that can’t be tested, it can be ignored.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is curious that those who claim such firm knowledge about God’s nature and works become silent when asked about God’s methods.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That doesn’t mean that the religious completely abjure evidence. If it supports their preconceptions, they’ll accept it.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, atheism, which is merely the lack of belief in gods, isn’t responsible for explaining altruism and ethics, a task that properly belongs to philosophy, science, and psychology. And those areas have offered plenty of nonreligious explanations for the “Moral law” and altruism. The explanations involve evolution, reason, and education.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So if morality is innate, it’s certainly malleable.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rapid change in many aspects of morality, even in the last century, also suggests that much of its “innateness” comes not from evolution but from learning. That’s because evolutionary change simply doesn’t occur fast enough to explain societal changes like our realization that women are not an inferior moiety of humanity, or that we shouldn’t torture prisoners. The explanation for these changes must reside in reason and learning: our realization that there is no rational basis for giving ourselves moral privilege over those who belong to other groups.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But some of our moral behaviors, if not sentiments, almost certainly evolved. Evidence for that comes from finding parallels between the behavior of our own species and that of our relatives.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But the God hypothesis for morality and altruism has its own problems. It fails, for example, to specify exactly which moral judgments were instilled in people by God and which, if any, might rest on secular reason. It doesn’t explain why slavery, torture, and disdain for women and strangers were considered proper behaviors not too long ago, but are now seen as immoral. For if anything is true, God-given morality should remain constant over time and space. In contrast, if morality reflects a malleable social veneer on an evolutionary base, it should change as society changes. And it has.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It doesn’t trivialize morality to argue that it is based on evolution and secular reason.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When one has a religious experience, what is “true” is only that one has had that experience, not that its contents convey anything about reality.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can you prove that leprechauns don’t live in my garden? Well, not absolutely, but if you never see one, and they have no effects, than you can provisionally conclude that they don’t exist. And so it is with all the fanciful features and creatures we firmly believe don’t exist.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Putting all this together, we see that religion is like Sagan’s invisible dragon. The missing evidence for any god is simply too glaring, and the special pleading too unconvincing, to make its existence anything more than a logical possibility. It’s reasonable to conclude, provisionally but confidently, that the absence of evidence for God is indeed evidence for his absence.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science’s results alone justify its usefulness, for it is, hands down, the single best way we’ve devised to understand the universe.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The conflation of faith as “unevidenced belief” with its vernacular use as “confidence based on experience” is simply a word trick used to buttress religion.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The orderliness of nature—the so-called set of natural laws—is not an assumption but an observation.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Accommodationists further accuse scientists of having “faith in reason.” Yet reason is not an a priori assumption, but a tool that’s been shown to work. We don’t have faith in reason; we use reason, and we use it because it produces results and progressive understanding... Reason is simply the way we justify our beliefs, and if you’re not using it, whether you’re justifying religious or scientific beliefs, you deserve no one’s attention.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Isn’t science, as some maintain, based on a “faith” that it’s good to pursue the truth? Hardly. The notion that knowledge is better than ignorance is not a quasi-religious faith, but a preference: we prefer to know the truth because accepting what’s false doesn’t give us useful answers about the universe.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every bit of truth clawed from nature over the last four centuries has involved completely ignoring God, for even religious scientists park their faith at the laboratory door.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the journalist Nick Cohen noted about accusations that atheism is like religion, “It’s not a charge I’d throw around if I were seeking to defend faith. When people say of dozens of political and cultural movements from monetarism to Marxism that their followers treat their cause ‘like a religion,’ they never mean it as a compliment. They mean that dumb obedience to higher authority and an obstinate attachment to dogma mark its adherents.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For good people to do evil doesn’t require only religion, or even any religion, but simply one of its key elements: belief without evidence—in other words, faith. And that kind of faith is seen not just in religion, but in any authoritarian ideology that puts dogma above truth and frowns on dissent.”
Jerry Coyne (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source