“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

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Jerry Coyne 154

American biologist 1949

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And insofar as theological interpretation has changed, it’s done so not as a result of faith’s quest for truth, but of pressure from science and secular morality. Really, can any theologian, philosopher, or scientist tell me anything about God now that we didn’t know 500 years ago? Then ask a scientist what we know now about science that we didn’t know in 1500.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

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“In this type of the […] every five years, the secularism is changing the meaning. So now I am thinking that I must come with a new meaning of the secularism.”

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

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Context: Theologians often say that faith must come first, and that morality must be deduced from faith. We say that morality must come first, and faith, to those whose nature fits them to entertain it, will come out of the experience of a deepened moral life as its richest, choicest fruit.
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We seek to come into touch with the ultimate power in things, the ultimate peace in things, which yet, in any literal sense, we know well that we cannot know. We seek to become morally certain — that is, certain for moral purposes — of what is beyond the reach of demonstration. But our moral optimism must include the darkest facts that pessimism can point to, include them and transcend them.

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