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

Jerry Coyne

Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible is a 2015 book by the biologist Jerry Coyne concerning the relationship between science and religion. Coyne argues that religion and science are incompatible, by surveying the history of science and stating that both religion and science make claims about the universe, yet only science is open to the fact that it may be wrong.Coyne was astonished that after having published his book, Why Evolution Is True, the proportion of creationists in America still remained between 40 and 46 percent. He felt that faith was the reason that kept them from accepting the facts and evidence for evolution.

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“In fact, changes like the elimination of limbo don’t come from new information, but from secular currents in society that make church dogma seem insupportable or even barbaric.”

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 71

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“But all that changed when Darwin explained those designlike features by natural selection. The best evidence for God simply vanished.”

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 78

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 85-86

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 25

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““Blasphemy” and “heresy” are terms of religion, not science.”

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 70

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 78-79

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 37

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 124

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“The orderliness of nature—the so-called set of natural laws—is not an assumption but an observation.”

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 210

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

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

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“The most important component of the incompatibility between science and religion is religion’s dependence on faith.”

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

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

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“In other words, truth is simply what is: what exists in reality and can be verified by rational and independent observers.”

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

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

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“It’s important to realize that philosophical naturalism is, like atheism, a provisional view. It’s not the kind of worldview that says, “I know there is no god,” but the kind that says, “Until I see some evidence, I don’t accept the existence of gods.””

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 95

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“After all, what new insights has religion produced in the last century?”

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 17

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“The question to ask believers is this: “Does it really matter whether what you believe about God is true—or don’t you care?” If it does matter, then you must justify your beliefs; if it doesn’t, then you must justify belief itself.”

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 63

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“But the God hypothesis for morality and altruism has its own problems. It fails, for example, to specify exactly which moral judgments were instilled in people by God and which, if any, might rest on secular reason. It doesn’t explain why slavery, torture, and disdain for women and strangers were considered proper behaviors not too long ago, but are now seen as immoral. For if anything is true, God-given morality should remain constant over time and space. In contrast, if morality reflects a malleable social veneer on an evolutionary base, it should change as society changes. And it has.”

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 177

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 83

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“When facing “scientific” arguments for God like these, ask yourself three questions. First, what’s more likely: that these are puzzles only because we refuse to see God as an answer, or simply because science hasn’t yet provided a naturalistic answer? In other words, is the religious explanation so compelling that we can tell scientists to stop working on the evolution and mechanics of consciousness, or on the origin of life, because there can never be a naturalistic explanation? Given the remarkable ability of science to solve problems once considered intractable, and the number of scientific phenomena that weren’t even known a hundred years ago, it’s probably more judicious to admit ignorance than to tout divinity.
Second, if invoking God seems more appealing than admitting scientific ignorance, ask yourself if religious explanations do anything more than rationalize our ignorance. That is, does the God hypothesis provide independent and novel predictions or clarify things once seen as puzzling—as truly scientific hypotheses do? Or are religious explanations simply stop-gaps that lead nowhere?…Does invoking God to explain the fine-tuning of the universe explain anything else about the universe? If not, then that brand of natural theology isn’t really science, but special pleading.
Finally, even if you attribute scientifically unexplained phenomena to God, ask yourself if the explanation gives evidence for your God—the God who undergirds your religion and your morality. If we do find evidence for, say, a supernatural origin of morality, can it be ascribed to the Christian God, or to Allah, Brahma, or any one god among the thousands worshipped on Earth? I’ve never seen advocates of natural theology address this question.”

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 156-157

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 258

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“If religion and science get along so well, why are so many scientists nonbelievers?”

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

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 12