This post is from last year. "Religion and science are enemies."

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago biologist, wrote this about religion and science:

"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."

In a comment at the Wall Street Journal I published this quote and I was surprised someone wrote this about it:

"Thank you for that very enlightening comment about religion versus science. I think it nicely encapsulates the contrast between the two disciplines and lays bare the stark difference. People are too impatient for science to answer many questions and they assume religion can solve that problem. And, of course, religion creates a narrative that does the job. Never mind that it is fiction."