" A huge water geyser on Saturn’s moon helps make the rings, and a bonus eclipse from Mars http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/a-huge-water-geyser-on-saturns-moon-helps-make-the-rings-and-a-bonus-eclipse-from-mars/" September 17, 2012

“What distinguishes knowledge is not certainty but evidence.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 30 (quoting Walter Kaufmann)

“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 book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 67

“The conflation of faith as “unevidenced belief” with its vernacular use as “confidence based on experience” is simply a word trick used to buttress religion.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 208

“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 book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 195

“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

" Biblical morality part 2: Killing non-virgin brides and rebellious kids http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/biblical-morality-part-2-killing-non-virgin-brides-and-rebellious-kids/" June 26, 2012

“I’m not a Marxist, but Marx got at least one thing right: for many, religion weakens the incentive to fix both personal and societal problems.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 256

“The interest I have in believing in something is not a proof that the something exists.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 29 (quoting Voltaire)

“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 book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 171

“Theodicy is the Achilles Heel of faith. There is no reasonable answer to the problem of gratuitous evil (i. e., the slaughter of children or mass killings by natural phenomena like tsunamis), and the will to continue believing in the face of such things truly shows the folly of faith. For those evils prove absolutely either that God is not benevolent and omnipotent, or that there is no god. (Special pleading like “we don’t know God’s mind” doesn’t wash, for the same people who say such things also claim to know that God is benevolent and omnipotent). Both nonbelief or belief in a malicious or uncaring God are unacceptable to the goddy. Ergo, any rational person who contemplates gratuitous evil must become an agnostic, an atheist, or someone who rejects the Abrahamic God. It is a touchstone of rationality.”

Jerry Coyne

" The Christmas NYT: faith everywhere http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/the-christmas-nyt-faith-everywhere/" December 26, 2012

“Postmodernism poisons everything.”

Jerry Coyne

" A book review claims that there is no conflict between science and religion, but for dumb reasons https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/a-book-review-claims-that-there-is-no-conflict-between-science-and-religion-but-for-an-unusual-reason/" August 9, 2015

“Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible—though very unlikely—that our whole world is controlled by elves. But supernatural explanations like these are simply never needed; we manage to understand the natural world just fine using reason and materialism.”

Jerry Coyne

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), pp. 224-225

“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 book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 87-88

“If you can’t think of an observation that could disprove a theory, that theory simply isn’t scientific.”

Jerry Coyne

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), p. 138

“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

" Tania Lombrozo strokes the faithful at NPR http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/tania-lombrozo-strokes-the-faithful-at-npr/" September 23, 2013