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Jerry A. Coyne Quotes

In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevi...

Jerry A. Coyne

In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevi...

Tags: biology, confessions of the darwinists, conjecture, darwin, darwinism, darwinist confessions, evolution, macro evolution, macroevolution, neo darwinism

For good people to do evil doesn't require only religion, or even any religion, but simply one of it's key elements: belief without evidence-in other words, faith.And that kind of faith is seen not ju...

Jerry A. Coyne

For good people to do evil doesn't require only religion, or even any religion, but simply one of it's key elements: belief without evidence-in other words, faith.And that kind of faith is seen not ju...

Tags: atheism, atheist argument, communism, fascism, religion vs science

About Author
Jerry Allen Coyne (born December 30, 1949) is an American biologist and skeptic known for his work on speciation and his commentary on intelligent design. A professor emeritus at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, he has published numerous papers on the theory of evolution. His concentration is speciation and ecological and evolutionary genetics, particularly as they involve the fruit fly, Drosophila. In 2023 he became a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
He is the author of the text Speciation and the bestselling non-fiction book Why Evolution Is True. Coyne maintains a website and writes for his blog, also called Why Evolution Is True. He is a hard determinist.
Coyne gained attention outside of the scientific community as a public critic of religion. As a proponent of New Atheism, he is often cited with atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. He is the author of the book Faith Versus Fact.

Which do you think is more valuable to humanity?a. Finding ways to tell humans that they have free will despite the incontrovertible fact that their actions are completely dictated by the laws of phys...

Jerry A. Coyne

Which do you think is more valuable to humanity?a. Finding ways to tell humans that they have free will despite the incontrovertible fact that their actions are completely dictated by the laws of phys...

Tags: brains, determinism, ghosts, illusion of free will, knowledge, laws of physics, nature, neurology, philosophy, physics

As for the claim that science is a kind of faith because it rests on untestable assumptions, depends on authority, and so on, this involves either a deliberate or an unconscious conflation of what fai...

Jerry A. Coyne

As for the claim that science is a kind of faith because it rests on untestable assumptions, depends on authority, and so on, this involves either a deliberate or an unconscious conflation of what fai...

There is an increasing (and disturbing) tendency of psychologists, biologists, and philosophers to Darwinize every aspect of human behavior, turning its study into a scientific parlor game. But imagin...

Jerry A. Coyne

There is an increasing (and disturbing) tendency of psychologists, biologists, and philosophers to Darwinize every aspect of human behavior, turning its study into a scientific parlor game. But imagin...

[W]hen one has a religious experience, what is 'true' is only that one has had that experience, not that its contents convey anything about reality. To determine that, one needs a way to verify the co...

Jerry A. Coyne

[W]hen one has a religious experience, what is 'true' is only that one has had that experience, not that its contents convey anything about reality. To determine that, one needs a way to verify the co...

Tags: philosophy, reason, religion, science