Educators From The United States

"In the end, religious investigations of “truth,” unlike those of science, are deeply dependent on confirmation bias. You start with what you were taught to believe, or what you want to believe, and then accept only those facts that support your prejudices. This is the basis for the theological practice of “apologetics,” designed to defend religion against counterarguments and disconfirming evidence....In contrast, science has no apologetics, for we test our conclusions by trying to find counterevidence."

"My claim is this: science and religion are incompatible because they have different methods for getting knowledge about reality, have different ways of assessing the reliability of that knowledge, and, in the end, arrive at conflicting conclusions about the universe. “Knowledge” acquired by religion is at odds not only with scientific knowledge, but also with knowledge professed by other religions. In the end, religion’s methods, unlike those of science, are useless for understanding reality."

"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."

"You can find some religions without creationism, but you can’t find creationism without religion."

"These (i. e., the statements of the Nicene Creed) are all empirical statements about reality: they are either true or false, even if some are hard to investigate. These claims, of course, absolutely conflict with those of other faiths. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Muslims believe that those who do so will spend eternity in hell. Doesn’t choosing among such faiths require a way to evaluate whether this dogma is true?"

"Although scientists come in all faiths, including no faith at all, there is no Hindu science, no Muslim science, and no Jewish science. There is only science, combining brainpower from the whole world to produce one accepted body of knowledge. In contrast, there are thousands of religions, most differing profoundly in what they see as “true.”"

"Living with uncertainty is hard for many people, and is one of the reasons why people prefer religious truths that are presented as absolute."

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

"Claims of supernatural phenomena like the efficacy of prayer are rendered unfalsifiable by the assertion that “God will not be tested.” (Of course, if the tests had been successful, then testing God would have been fine!)"

"“What distinguishes knowledge is not certainty but evidence.”"

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

"Religion is heavily laden with the kind of confirmation bias that makes people see their own faiths as true and all others as false. In other words, religion is replete with features to help people fool themselves."

"“The interest I have in believing in something is not a proof that the something exists.”"

"Any “knowledge” incapable of being revised with advances in data and human thinking does not deserve the name of knowledge."

"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?"

"I could go on, but the point is clear: religions make explicit claims about reality—about what exists and happens in the universe. These claims involve the existence of gods, the number of such gods (polytheism or monotheism), their character and behavior (usually loving and beneficent, but, in the case of Hindu and ancient Greek gods, sometimes mischievous or malevolent), how they interact with the world, whether or not there are souls or life after death, and, above all, how the deities wish us to behave—their moral code. These are empirical claims, and although some may be hard to test, they must, like all claims about reality, be defended with a combination of evidence and reason. If we find no credible evidence, no good reasons to believe, then those claims should be disregarded, just as most of us ignore claims about ESP, astrology, and alien abduction. After all, beliefs important enough to affect you for eternity surely deserve the closest scrutiny."

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

"Ironically, as the credibility of creationists grows smaller, their voices get louder."

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

"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."

"One can meet all the emotional requisites of a human—except for the assurance that you’ll find a life after death—without the superstitions of religion."

"Understanding reality, in the sense of being able to use what we know to predict what we don’t, is best achieved using the tools of science, and is never achieved using the methods of faith. That is attested by the acknowledged success of science in telling us about everything from the smallest bits of matter to the origin of the universe itself—compared with the abject failure of religion to tell us anything about gods, including whether they exist."

"Science and religion, then, are competitors in the business of finding out what is true about our universe. In this goal religion has failed miserably, for its tools for discerning “truth” are useless. These areas are incompatible in precisely the same way, and in the same sense, that rationality is incompatible with irrationality."

"I was flabbergasted. How could it be that someone found evidence convincing but was still not convinced? The answer, of course, was that his religion had immunized him against my evidence."

"It didn’t take long to realize the futility of using evidence to sell evolution to Americans, for faith led them to discount and reject the facts right before their noses."

"Although this book deals with the conflict between religion and science, I see this as only one battle in a wider war—a war between rationality and superstition. Religion is but a single brand of superstition (others include beliefs in astrology, paranormal phenomena, homeopathy, and spiritual healing), but it is the most widespread and harmful form of superstition. And science is but one form of rationality (philosophy and mathematics are others), but it is a highly developed form, and the only one capable of describing and understanding reality."

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

"We are the one creature to whom natural selection has bequeathed a brain complex enough to comprehend the laws that govern the universe. And we should be proud that we are the only species that has figured out how we came to be."

"Evolution tells us where we came from, not where we can go."

"Now, science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is possible—though very unlikely—that our whole world is controlled by elves. But supernatural explanations like these are simply never needed; we manage to understand the natural world just fine using reason and materialism."

"Because of the hegemony of fundamentalist religion in the United States, this country has been among the most resistant to the fact of human evolution."

"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."

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

"We now have many of the answers that once eluded Darwin, thanks to two developments that he could not have imagined: continental drift and molecular taxonomy."

"The biogeographic evidence for evolution is now so powerful that I have never seen a creationist book, article, or lecture that has tried to refute it. Creationists simply pretend that the evidence doesn’t exist."

"Tiny, nonfunctional wings, a dangerous appendix, eyes that can’t see, and silly ear muscles simply don’t make sense if you think that species were specially created."

"We humans have many vestigial features proving that we evolved. The most famous is the appendix."

"It’s clear that this resistance stems largely from religion. You can find religions without creationism, but you never find creationism without religion."

"This book lays out the main lines of evidence for evolution. For those who oppose Darwinism purely as a matter of faith, no amount of evidence will do—theirs is a belief not based on reason."

"The battle for evolution seems never-ending. And the battle is part of a wider war, a war between rationality and superstition."

"Yes, it’s true that gender ideologues will oppose the article and upcoming book, but they have long put ideology over science, a strategy that is a loser, as we know from the failures of creationism and intelligent design."

"I do care when people like Steve Novella, who should know better, argue that biological sex is not a binary but a spectrum. In fact, there are far more people born with more or fewer than 20 fingers and toes than are born as true intersexes, yet we do not say that “digit number in humans is a spectrum.”"

"In the end, I am both amazed and amused at people like Kingsnorth who long for the good old days when people embraced Christianity and thus were both moral and fulfilled. There were no god-shaped holes then. But, given a choice of living then and now, I’m sure that all the Christian luddites would choose to live now. As for the god-shaped hole, all I can say is that many people, including me, don’t have one. Our lives get meaning not from embracing Jesus, but from whatever we find fulfilling: friends, loved ones, and family, work, hobbies, and so on. True, some people will always glom onto faith because it’s so easy: all you have to do is go to a church and you get a preexisting set of beliefs, friends and supporters. But people like me simply can’t believe in god if there’s no evidence for god."

"Keeping budgets secret is what universities do."

"Well, those opposing extreme gender ideology may be fomenting things, but it’s not because we’re white, religious, or nationalistic. And have these organizations ever considered that there may be many black people or Hispanics who also oppose gender activism? One might even say that blaming all this stuff on white people is a form of racism."

"No, if there is to ever be a two-state solution, the Palestinian side cannot be run by anyone with a history of sponsoring terrorism. And Palestinian leaders like that are hard to find."

"The whole brouhaha serves to demonstrate that “cancel culture”—the attempt to ruin someone’s career if they transgress “progressive” ideological stands—is alive and well."

"I really dislike land acknowledgments because they’re purely performative. They are there to make the issuer look progressive and moral, but they accomplish exactly nothing. And that is what “woke” means."

"It’s funny, but telling, that those who claim that sex is a spectrum or continuum never specify how many sexes there are, either in humans or other species. I suspect that if they responded—based on their “multivariate, multidimensional” definition of sex—that “there are many, many sexes,” or “I can’t answer that”, they would be laughed out of the house. But we all know that that the “spectrum” people are not dumb or willfully ignorant. They are simply imbued with a certain ideology."

"How embarrassing is it, given the situation, that the SSE, the ASN, and the SSB got their biology wrong while the Trump administration got it right! But that’s what happens when scientific societies get ideologically captured."