Jerry Coyne: Trending quotes (page 8)

“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

" Believer Michael Robbins exhibits Maru’s Syndrome on The Dish http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/07/26/believer-michael-robbins-exhibits-marus-syndrome-on-the-dish/" July 26, 2014

God , People

“It’s clear that this resistance stems largely from religion. You can find religions without creationism, but you never find creationism without religion.”

Jerry Coyne

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

Religion

“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

" Jeffrey Tayler continues making Salon friendlier to anti-theism https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/jeffrey-tayler-continues-making-salon-friendlier-to-anti-theism/" April 13, 2015

Religion , Way , Understanding , Reality

“Evolution tells us where we came from, not where we can go.”

Jerry Coyne

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), p. 231

“There is no compromise possible between catering to woke students and maintaining journalistic standards. We all know that this is true. If you feed the beast, it only gets hungrier, and is never full.”

Jerry Coyne

" The “grievance studies” hoax: a forum at the Chronicle of Higher Education https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/11/14/campus-journalism-fracas-reaches-the-new-york-times/" November 14, 2019

“In other words, (Helen) Pluckrose et al. got a lot more attention than I did. And that’s fine. For they did, to my mind, expose a creeping rot in the floorboards of academic humanities, which has becoming increasingly solipsistic, tendentious, propagandistic, and devoid of critical thinking but besotted with intersectionalist ideology.”

Jerry Coyne

" Campus journalism fracas reaches the New York Times https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/07/26/the-grievance-studies-hoax-a-forum-at-the-chronicle-of-higher-education/" July 26, 2019

Thinking

“What the comedy club in Montreal is doing is not only ridiculous, but is a prime example of virtue signaling: making a gesture to trumpet your own ideological purity, but a gesture that has no effect on society and no mitigation of injustice.”

Jerry Coyne

" Accusations of cultural appropriation gone wild: Canadian comedy club bars white comedian with dreadlocks https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/accusations-of-cultural-appropriation-gone-wild-canadian-comedy-club-bars-white-comedian-with-dreadlocks/" January 16, 2019

Making love

“Yes, the claim that sex in humans is not a binary is pretty much a lie, and is made on ideological rather than scientific grounds.”

Jerry Coyne

" A defense of the binary in human sex https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2020/02/14/a-defense-of-the-binary-in-human-sex/" February 14, 2020

Sex , Lie

“As we know, wokeness prizes ideology and narrative over truth.”

Jerry Coyne

" The New York Times touts Gwyneth Paltrow and “her other ways of knowing” https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2020/02/04/gwyneth-paltrow-and-her-other-ways-of-knowing-touted-in-the-nyt/" November 29, 2019

Truth

“Everyone else besides the faithful already knows that religion has nothing useful to say to science.”

Jerry Coyne

" Science versus religion: Are they “gifts” to each other? https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/11/29/science-versus-religion-are-they-gifts-to-each-other/" November 29, 2019

Science , Faith , Religion

“HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?”

Jerry Coyne

That’s the question you should always ask believers when they make unsupported assertions, ranging from “God is loving” to “Our souls live on after death.” The answer will always be one of two things: “The Bible says so,” or “I just know it to be true.” Neither of those are rational answers, but they satisfy the religious.
It is in fact the “how-do-you-know-that” query that really distinguishes New Atheism from Old. While atheists have always decried the lack of evidence for theism, it is the infusion of scientists and science-friendly people into atheism, starting with Carl Sagan and continuing on to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Pinker, and Dennett, that has made us realize that religious dogmas are in fact hypotheses, and you need reasons and evidence for accepting them. If you have none, then you have no reason to believe in God.
" Catholic official says that angels exist but are wingless http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/catholic-official-says-that-angels-exist-but-are-wingless/" December 21, 2013