Jerry Coyne on Science

"In the end, a theory that can’t be shown to be wrong can never be shown to be right."

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

"Science’s results alone justify its usefulness, for it is, hands down, the single best way we’ve devised to understand the universe."

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

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

"A well-understood and testable hypothesis like sexual selection surely trumps an untestable appeal to the inscrutable caprices of a creator."

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

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

"What might be considered a real contribution of science to religious belief is the empirical demonstration that some of those beliefs are wrong."

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

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

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

"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?"

"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."

"In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, faith is a vice."

"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."

"But this doesn’t constitute a crisis—it’s a very interesting finding that shows that variation in a genome can arise by processes other than mutation of an organism’s own DNA. The disposition of that variation still must occur via either natural selection or genetic drift . This hasn’t really changed the theory of evolution one iota, though it’s changed our view of where organisms can acquire new genes."

"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."

"This implicit denigration of objectivity, and of the way science is done, irritates me immensely. It privileges anecdotes over data, “lived experience” over objective tests, and confirmation bias over uncomfortable truths. But that is the way that many humanities scholars, corrupted by postmodernism, have operated. Denying or denigrating an objective search for truth, they’re free to say whatever they want, or “discover” whatever they find ideologically convenient."

"Atheism—at least the refusal to accept gods for which there’s no evidence—is a logical outgrowth of science, and explains 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."