Jerry Coyne - Religious Quotes

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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
What might be considered a real contribution of science to religious belief is the empirical demonstration that some of those beliefs are wrong.

Jerry Coyne
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
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
Religion has nothing to tell scientists that can improve their trade. Indeed, the progress of science has required shedding all vestiges of religion, whether those be the beliefs themselves or religious methods for finding truth. We do not need those hypotheses.

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

Jerry Coyne
The rational scrutiny of religious faith involves asking believers only two questions:

How do you know that?

What makes you so sure that the claims of your faith are right and the claims of other faiths are wrong?

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
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
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
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
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
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
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