Jerry Coyne - Evidence Quotes

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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
While our view of the world is filtered through our senses, evolution has, by and large, molded those senses to perceive the world accurately, for there's a severe penalty to be paid for seeing things wrongly. That holds not only for the external environment, but also for the character of others. Without accurate perceptions, we couldn't find food, avoid predators and other dangers, or form harmonious social groups. And following those perceptions is indeed the pursuit of true beliefs : beliefs based on evidence. Natural selection doesn't mold true beliefs; it molds the sensory and neural apparatus that, in general, promotes the formation of true beliefs.

Jerry Coyne
Religion claims to help us understand things about the universe, but, unlike science has no way to test or verify its claims. Both science and religion compete to understand reality, but only science has the method to verify its findings, while religion merely buttresses emotional and epistemic commitments made in advance, commitments impervious to evidence.

Jerry Coyne
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
Since neither Robbins, nor Hart, nor any other Sophisticated Theologian™ or Hipster Poet has produced any evidence for God that would convince someone who wasn't already a believer or an incipient believer, we needn't take their claims seriously. The reason people like Robbins sneer at the New Atheists' call for evidence is because believers don't have any.

Jerry Coyne
After all, by what lights can you see atheism as a leap of faith? What is the faith there? Failure to accept gods is no more a leap of faith than is doubting the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, or Santa Claus. It's not faith when you refuse to accept a proposition for which there's no evidence.

Jerry Coyne
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
What distinguishes knowledge is not certainty but evidence.

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

Jerry Coyne
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
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
That doesn't mean that the religious completely abjure evidence. If it supports their preconceptions, they'll accept it.

Jerry Coyne
Atheism—at least the refusal to accept gods for which there's no evidence—is a logical outgrowth of science, and explains (at least to me) why, compared to Americans as a whole, scientists are so much more atheistic. If your career depends on establishing your confidence in a phenomenon proportional to the degree of evidence supporting it, then God is a no-go. The climate of doubt that is endemic—and essential—to the scientific enterprise is a true disaster for religion. Religious people know this, and that largely explains the many ways they attack science.

Jerry Coyne
The biogeographic evidence for evolution is now so powerful that I have never seen a creationist book, article, or lecture that has tried to refute it. Creationists simply pretend that the evidence doesn't exist.

Jerry Coyne
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
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
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
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
An intellectual tradition, as anyone with two neurons to rub together knows, is not the same thing as evidence. But theologians seem to lack that second neuron.

Jerry Coyne