"By pretending that religion has any content beyond wish-thinking and superstition, or by showing unwarranted respect for religious tenets and ideas, accommodationists are in fact enabling religion and promoting the most invidious 'way of knowing' I can think of—faith. 'A person of faith' is not someone to be admired. Such a person should be criticized for being delusional, and accepting truths on the basis of no good evidence."
-- Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago biologist, author of "Why Evolution Is True" and "Faith Versus Fact, Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible"
I suggest people should read the entire article including the comments at Jerry Coyne's website - More accommodationism at “The Conversation”
Jerry Coyne is brilliant. I visit his website every day which by the way is much better than my blog.
Another quote from the Jerry Coyne article is also excellent:
"Religion and science are enemies, for the former touts faith, revelation, and dogma as the way to discern truth about the Universe, while the latter rejects faith absolutely, depending on empirical methods, doubt, confirmation, and consensus. This is all laid out in Faith Versus Fact, and I won’t repeat it here. One more thing: science has repeatedly disproved the truth claims of religion, while religion has never done that to science. And there is not a single truth about the universe accepted by science that has been overturned by religion. They are indeed enemies, for though they both make claims about the nature of reality, one area has methods to adjudicate those truth claims, while the other (religion, of course), doesn’t. If religion did, we wouldn’t have thousands of religions making different and often incompatible claims about reality."
"Darwin was the first to use data from nature to convince people that evolution is true, and his idea of natural selection was truly novel. It testifies to his genius that the concept of natural theology, accepted by most educated Westerners before 1859, was vanquished within only a few years by a single five-hundred-page book. On the Origin of Species turned the mysteries of life's diversity from mythology into genuine science." -- Jerry Coyne
Thursday, January 25, 2018
An excellent quote from Jerry Coyne: “A person of faith is not someone to be admired. Such a person should be criticized for being delusional, and accepting truths on the basis of no good evidence."
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