Jerry Coyne - Evolution Quotes

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Because of the hegemony of fundamentalist religion in the United States, this country has been among the most resistant to the fact of human evolution.

Jerry Coyne
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
The battle for evolution seems never-ending. And the battle is part of a wider war, a war between rationality and superstition.

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
It doesn't trivialize morality to argue that it is based on evolution and secular reason.

Jerry Coyne
Evolution tells us where we came from, not where we can go.

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
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
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
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
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
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