Jerry Coyne - Science Quotes

42 Sourced Quotes

View all Jerry Coyne Quotes
Blasphemy and heresy are terms of religion, not science.

Jerry Coyne
The most important component of the incompatibility between science and religion is religion's dependence on faith.

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

Jerry Coyne
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
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
I am SO tired of this trope. It may indeed be the case that we can't justify a priori via philosophical lucubrations that we arrive at the truth about nature only by using the methods of science. My answer to that is increasingly becoming, So bloody what? The use of science is justified because it works, not because we can justify it philosophically. If we are interested in finding out what causes malaria, no amount of appeal to a deity, philosophical rumination, listening to music, reading novels, or waiting for a revelation will answer that question. We have to use scientific methods, which, of course, is how causes of disease are found.

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
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
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
If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator.

Jerry Coyne
But none of this criticism of science makes religion even a tiny bit more credible...
In contrast, religion has never been right in its claims about the universe—at least not in a way that all rational people can accept. There is no reliable method to show that the Trinity exists, that God is loving and all-powerful, that we'll meet our dead relatives in the afterlife, or that Brahma created the universe from a golden egg. Lacking a way to show its tenets are wrong, religion cannot show them to be right, even provisionally.

Jerry Coyne
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
In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, faith is a vice.

Jerry Coyne
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
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
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
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
Why, exactly, are scientists supposed to accord respect to a bunch of ancient fables that are not only ludicrous on their face, but motivate so much opposition to science?

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
Science and religion, then, are competitors in the business of finding out what is true about our universe. In this goal religion has failed miserably, for its tools for discerning truth are useless. These areas are incompatible in precisely the same way, and in the same sense, that rationality is incompatible with irrationality.

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
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
I have argued that religion is to science as superstition is to reason; indeed, that is the very reason they are incompatible.

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
Damn, but science is just a constant feed of cool new facts and theories. Theology doesn't come close.

Jerry Coyne
Religion has no warrant and no method for decreeing what is and what is not beyond science.

Jerry Coyne
If religion and science get along so well, why are so many scientists nonbelievers?

Jerry Coyne