Jerry Coyne Quotes

121 Sourced Quotes

One can meet all the emotional requisites of a human—except for the assurance that you'll find a life after death—without the superstitions of religion.

Jerry Coyne
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
The fact that both Jews and Christians ignore some of God's or Jesus's commands, but scrupulously obey others, is absolute proof that people pick and choose their morality not on the basis of its divine source, but because it comports with some innate morality that they derived from other sources.

Jerry Coyne
If you can't think of an observation that could disprove a theory, that theory simply isn't scientific.

Jerry Coyne
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
But all that changed when Darwin explained those designlike features by natural selection. The best evidence for God simply vanished.

Jerry Coyne
Science has only two things to contribute to religion: an analysis of the evolutionary, cultural, and psychological basis for believing things that aren't true, and a scientific disproof of some of faith's claims (e. g., Adam and Eve, the Great Flood). Religion has nothing to contribute to science, and science is best off staying as far away from faith as possible. The constructive dialogue between science and faith is, in reality, a destructive monlogue, with science making all the good points, tearing down religion in the process.

Jerry Coyne
Although this book deals with the conflict between religion and science, I see this as only one battle in a wider war—a war between rationality and superstition. Religion is but a single brand of superstition (others include beliefs in astrology, paranormal phenomena, homeopathy, and spiritual healing), but it is the most widespread and harmful form of superstition. And science is but one form of rationality (philosophy and mathematics are others), but it is a highly developed form, and the only one capable of describing and understanding reality.

Jerry Coyne
Above all, religion, faith healing, and alternative medicine all show the diagnostic feature of faith: an agenda not to find the truth, but to support one's biases, emotions, and personal beliefs.

Jerry Coyne
No reputable theologian, or rational believer for that matter, adheres strictly to Biblical morality. As everyone knows, believers pick and choose their morality from a smorgasbord of divine commands, both good and bad, in scripture. And doing that shows that you have a sense of right and wrong that doesn't come from the Bible or God. Ergo, it comes from evolution and culture.

Jerry Coyne
Even more than religious belief, acceptance or denial of evolution is a test of character. For if you deny evolution is true, you are either pandering to the public even though you know better (showing that you're ambitious but lack character), are truly ignorant of the facts (which means you can't be trusted to be informed about crucial issues), or are a flat-out creationist (showing that you're batshit crazy).

Jerry Coyne
No, we don't have faith in reason and science in the same way as Cru members have faith in God. I see faith according to Walter Kaufmann's definition: strong belief in propositions for which there is insufficient evidence to command the assent of every reasonable person. We have confidence in science because it has led us to provisional truths—it works. Cru doesn't even know if there's any God, or, if there is a divine presence, that it's the Abrahamic god rather than the Hindu god, Yahweh, or Wotan. And we use reason in the same way: it leads us to truth. Revelation, dogma, and authority do not, for if they did there would be only one religion rather than thousands with their disparate and often conflicting doctrines.

Jerry Coyne
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
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
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
Indeed, secular morality, which is not twisted by adherence to the supposed commands of a god, is superior to most religious morality.

Jerry Coyne
I was flabbergasted. How could it be that someone found evidence convincing but was still not convinced? The answer, of course, was that his religion had immunized him against my evidence.

Jerry Coyne
In the end theologians are jealous of science, for they are aware that it has greater authority than do their own ways of finding truth : dogma, authority, and revelation. Science does find truth, faith does not.

Jerry Coyne
It takes a profound hypocrisy to try to reconcile for others things that you can't reconcile for yourself.

Jerry Coyne
But this (a listing of illustrations of how the genome can change other than by mutations) doesn't constitute a crisis—it's a very interesting finding that shows that variation in a genome can arise by processes other than mutation of an organism's own DNA. The disposition of that variation still must occur via either natural selection (it can be good or bad) or genetic drift (no effect on fitness). This hasn't really changed the theory of evolution one iota, though it's changed our view of where organisms can acquire new genes.

Jerry Coyne
It didn't take long to realize the futility of using evidence to sell evolution to Americans, for faith led them to discount and reject the facts right before their noses.

Jerry Coyne
Anybody who claims that people don't cherry-pick their morality from the Bible, choosing that which comports with their extra-Biblical notions of what's good and bad, is simply blind.

Jerry Coyne
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
So if morality is innate, it's certainly malleable.

Jerry Coyne
I will have achieved my aim if, by the end of this book, you demand that people produce good reasons for what they believe—not only in religion, but in any area in which evidence can be brought to bear. I'll have achieved my aim when people devote as much effort to choosing a system of belief as they do to choosing their doctor. I'll have achieved my aim If the public stops awarding special authority about the universe and the human condition to preachers, imams, and clerics simply because they are religious figures. And above all, I'll have achieved my aim if, when you hear someone described as a person of faith, you see it as criticism rather than praise.

Jerry Coyne
This book lays out the main lines of evidence for evolution. For those who oppose Darwinism purely as a matter of faith, no amount of evidence will do—theirs is a belief not based on reason.

Jerry Coyne
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
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
Science has a huge advantage over other ways of knowing : built-in methods of self-correction.

Jerry Coyne
The interest I have in believing in something is not a proof that the something exists.

Jerry Coyne