The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.
The second pillar of incompatibility is that the scientific pretenses of religion, when challenged, become pseudoscientific. That is, when the inevitable clashes ensue between brain- and heart-based thinking, religion resorts to the same pseudoscientific defenses used by Holocaust deniers, UFO devotees, and advocates of extrasensory perception. The vast majority of believers don’t want their faith examined skeptically, nor do they honestly examine other faiths to find why they see their own as true and those others as false. Finally, like true pseudoscience, religion defends its claims by turning them into a watertight edifice immune to refutation. And what cannot be refuted cannot be accepted as true.
In the end, why isn’t it better to find out how the world really works instead of making up stories about it, or accepting stories concocted centuries ago? And if we don’t know the answers, why shouldn’t we simply admit that we don’t know, as scientists do regularly, and keep looking for answers using evidence and reason? Isn’t it time that we take to heart the Apostle Paul’s advice to the Corinthians to grow up and put away our childish things? Every obeisance we pay to faith buttresses those faiths that do real damage to our species and our planet.
It is time for us to stop seeing faith as a virtue, and to stop using the term “person of faith” as a compliment. After all, we don’t call someone who believes in astrology, homeopathy, ESP, alien abduction, or even Scientology a “person of faith,” even though that’s precisely what such people are. The irony of extolling unfounded beliefs was expressed by Bertrand Russell, the most outspoken atheist of his time, in the very first sentence of his collection Sceptical Essays:
I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
Or, as Sam Harris, Russell’s modern counterpart, argues, “Pretending to be certain when one isn’t—indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable—is both an intellectual and a moral failing.”
Finally, although I’m a scientist, am deeply moved by the wonders that science has brought to us in its short five centuries, and feel that religion is not only incompatible with science, but a roadblock to scientific progress, I am not proposing a robotic world governed by science. The world I want is one in which the strength of one’s beliefs about matters of fact is proportional to the evidence. It is a world where it is okay to reserve judgment if one doesn’t know the answer, and where it’s not seen as offensive to doubt the claims of others.
A world that is faithless would not be without the arts, either. Those don’t rest on faith, so imaginative art, literature, and music would still be with us. Too, we would retain justice, law, and compassion, perhaps in even greater measure than now, for our judgment wouldn’t be warped by adherence to unevidenced divine strictures.
But wouldn’t the end of faith also mean the end of morality and of the social benefits that come with religion? No, for the experience of Europe tells us this need not happen. Secular morality and nonreligious forms of communal experience are perfectly able to fill in the gaps when religion wanes. Indeed, secular morality, which is not twisted by adherence to the supposed commands of a god, is superior to most “religious” morality. And faith need not be replaced with other brands of faith: Europeans haven’t shifted their belief in God to belief in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. They’ve simply abandoned superstition altogether, and don’t seem to need the “atheist churches” that are sprouting in the United States and United Kingdom.
I want to end with two stories about faith and science. The first involves Robert L. Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland. On September 3, 2000, Park was on his customary jog through the woods when he had a gruesome accident. Its footing weakened by recent rains, a large oak tree beside the path fell on him as he was running by, crushing him and severely fracturing his arm and femur, which was driven right through the skin of his leg. He was pinned and unconscious. Fortunately, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador found Park and called for help on his cell phone. Without the Salvadoran’s phone, a product of science-based technology, Park, who was half a mile from the trailhead, would certainly have died. Two priests were also on the scene, but all they could offer was last rites.
Yet even when rescued, Park still would have died without modern medicine, especially antibiotics, which first appeared on the market in the mid-1940s. Because he had a large open wound through which soil bacteria entered his body, he required not only multiple surgeries and a temporary metal rod to bind his shattered femur, but also a catheter threaded through his arm into a vein near his heart, through which new and powerful antibiotics were infused into his body. It took nearly a year of this treatment before doctors beat back the infection.
Park’s recovery required a concatenation of events, none of which could have occurred without science. As he said, “I was taken to the most modern hospital in the nation’s capital, where I was put back together by skilled orthopedic surgeons guided by the latest medical imaging devices. They consulted frequently with various specialists. Psychiatrists monitored my emotional state; hematologists kept track of my blood tests, looking for indications of infection; caring professionals attended to me twenty-four hours a day; trained therapists guided me through rehabilitation.”
The point is that as well-intentioned as believers may be (and the two priests later became Park’s friends, strolling with him many times along the same trail), their faith is at best useless in such situations. There’s little doubt that most people pinned under a tree would prefer to get medical help rather than prayer. Indeed, Park was an atheist, and had he been conscious he might well have been frightened by hearing incantations muttered by priests. But even had he been Catholic, there is no evidence that last rites would accomplish anything, for we can’t be confident that even if there were a god, Catholicism, rather than, say, Islam, would be the one religion with the right god and beliefs. Faith has no way to find out. In the end, the priests’ words were as meaningless and ineffectual a superstition as my avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk when I was a child. Many people would have called Park’s recovery a miracle, but it wasn’t: it was the result of decades of scientific inquiry in many areas, as well as the diligence of trained doctors, nurses, and rehabilitationists. No prayers or supernatural interventions were involved.
For many, the transition from religion to nonbelief, from faith to rationality, is an awakening. Although that awakening may bring a sense of freedom and self-determination, it is sometimes catalyzed by tragedy and accompanied by regret for a life spent in servitude to superstition. Such was the case of Russ Briggs.
Briggs was a member of the Followers of Christ Church in Oregon, a sect that rejects medical care. He and his wife lost two boys shortly after birth, within a year of each other. One was premature but could easily have been saved had he not been tended by an untrained midwife. After the deaths, Briggs left the church in 1981. When trying to rejoin later, he was rebuffed and ostracized by his family and other Followers, one of whom publicly called him “a liar and a whoremonger.” Tormented by guilt, he continued to visit his sons’ graves, vividly describing his pain: “I stood there, a twenty-year-old child, sobbing and hurting, and trying to figure out why my child died. Had there been an incubator there, or modern medicine, I know he would have made it.” He added, “I could have saved them, but I let
them die.” This was an act of courage, for Briggs took full responsibility for what he did, avoiding rationalizing or covering his acts with the blanket of excuses called “God’s will.” He stands alone, having shed superstition and accepted the reality of what happened.
Briggs later accepted conventional medical care and produced two healthy daughters. Let those who see faith as a virtue—an attitude that allows the Followers to escape legal responsibility for child abuse—ponder what Briggs said when recalling how his religion killed his sons: “It’s only when you no longer have that belief that all of a sudden it comes to you: How could I ever have done that?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As this book is only tangentially connected with my day-to-day work in evolutionary genetics, I have benefited greatly from the help and encouragement of diverse friends and colleagues, including Dan Barker, Andrew Berry, Russell Blackford, Paul Bloom, Peter Boghossian, Maarten Boudry, Sarah Brosnan, Sean Carroll, Matthew Cobb, Graham Coop, Martin Corcoran, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Michael Fisher, Yonatan Fishman, Faye Flam, Caroline Fraser, Karl Giberson, Anthony Grayling, Miranda Hale, Larry Hamelin, Sam Harris, Will Hausman, Alex Lickerman, John Loftus, Eric MacDonald, Anne Magurran, Peggy Mason, Greg Mayer, Steve Pinker, Leslie Rissler, Jason Rosenhouse, Allen Sanderson, Michael Shermer, Grania Spingies, the late Victor Stenger, Sue Strandberg, and Ed Suominen. Hugh Dominic Stiles was indispensable for finding the source of many obscure quotations. Not all of these people, of course, will agree with everything I’ve written, and I apologize to those whose names have been inadvertently omitted. Many of the ideas and themes in this book were developed in posts on my Web site, whyevolutionistrue.com, and I am grateful to the dozens of readers whose comments contributed to my own thinking. Finally, I benefited once again from the advice and help of my agent, John Brockman, and from the astute editorial skills of Wendy Wolf at Penguin Random House.
Parts of chapter 3 are modified from articles in the New Republic and the Times Literary Supplement (Coyne 2000, 2009b), while parts of chapter 4, on religious critiques of science, are modified from pieces originally published on my Web site (Coyne 2013a, 2013b) and in Slate (Coyne 2013c).
NOTES
All quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James Version, and definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary were accessed from the electronic version available at the University of Chicago Libraries. When using the word “god,” I capitalize it when it refers to the Abrahamic God of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, but leave it lowercase when it refers to generic gods. Because the Abrahamic God is conventionally referred to as “he,” I use that word as well but have not capitalized it.
Epigraphs
“God is an hypothesis”: Shelley 1915 [1813], p. 5.
“We have already compared”: Ingersoll 1900a, pp. 133–34.
Preface
“The good thing about science”: “The good thing about science . . . Neil deGrasse Tyson,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRxx8pen6JY.
But my vague beliefs in a God: Manier 2008.
the proportion of creationists: My book was Why Evolution Is True (Coyne 2009a); the Gallup poll on evolution is Gallup 2014.
“The point is not that we atheists can prove”: Harris 2007.
Life After Faith: Kitcher 2014.
Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained and Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Boyer 2002; Dennett 2006.
Chapter 1: The Problem
“For we often talked of my daughter”: Tennyson, “The Village Wife,” http://www .telelib.com/authors/TennysonAlfred/verse/ballads/villagewife.htm/. The original was:
Fur hoffens we talkt o’ my darter es died o’ the fever at fall: An’ I thowt ’twur the will o’ the Lord, but Miss Annie she said it wur draäins.
“Then has it in truth come to this”: Draper 1875, p. 363.
“persons of every religious denomination”: Cornell University 1892.
“So far from wishing to injure Christianity”: A. D. White 1932, p. vi.
“Then it was that there was borne”: Ibid., p. viii.
And while not all of the “science and religion” books: WorldCat search, January 20, 2014. Between 1974 and 1983, WorldCat lists 48,577 books published in English on the topic of religion. Of these, 514, or 1.06 percent, were on “science and religion.” In the next decade, 1984–93, the proportion remained similar: 0.96 percent (606 out of 63,120). But over the last two decades the proportion nearly doubled: 1.40 percent from 1994 to 2003 (1,274 out of 90,906) and 2.33 percent between 2004 and 2013 (2,574 out of 110,259).
“By one report, U.S. higher education”: Larson and Witham 1997, p. 89.
“building bridges between science and theology”: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, http://www.ctns.org/index.html.
Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion: http://www.aaas.org/DoSER.
the John Templeton Foundation: Bains 2011.
the Clergy Letter Project: http://www.theclergyletterproject.org.
“The sponsors of many of these”: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2006.
But because many Americans believe otherwise: Statistics on young-Earth creationism from Gallup 2014.
“The science of evolution does not make claims”: Hess 2009.
Because nearly 20 percent of Americans: American acceptance of evolution from Gallup 2014; proportion of American nonbelievers from Pew Research 2012a.
“Though faith is above reason”: United States Catholic Conference 1994, Section 159.
Further, as we’ll see: Masci 2009.
When asked what they would do: Time/Roper poll cited in Masci 2007; D. Masci, personal communication.
A related poll: Gallup 2007.
A 2009 Pew poll: Pew Research 2009a; 68 percent of those not affiliated with a church saw a conflict between science and religion.
“Reason #3”: Barna Research 2011.
One of the more remarkable demonstrations: Citizens for Objective Public Education 2013.
Surveying American scientists: Larson and Witham 1997; Pew Research 2009b.
When one moves to scientists: Ecklund 2010.
Sitting at the top tier: Larson and Witham 1997.
So, among academics: Gross and Simmons 2007, 2009.
The first is that elite scientists: Ecklund and Scheitle 2007.
But there’s further evidence: Decline of religious belief in America: Grant 2008, 2014. Older scientists being less religious: Pew Research 2009b; Gallup 2011. Scientists between eighteen and thirty-four years old, for instance, are significantly more likely to believe in God (42 percent) than are scientists over sixty-five (28 percent). Conversely, scientists who reject both God and a “higher power” are more frequent in the older group (48 percent) than in the younger (32 percent).
“Despite a million chances”: Coyne 2009a, p. 223.
This makes “nones” the fastest-growing category: Pew Research 2012a.
“Sir John believed”: John Templeton Foundation, “Philanthropic Vision,” http://www .templeton.org/sir-john-templeton/philanthropic-vision.
“Sir John’s own eclectic list”: John Templeton Foundation, “Science and the Big Questions,” http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/core-funding-areas/science-and-the-big-questions.
You may have encountered the foundation: John Templeton Foundation, “Big Questions Essay Series,” http://www.templeton.org/signature-programs/big-questions-essay-series.
The foundation’s most famous award: Bains 2011; John Templeton Foundation, “About the Prize” at http://www.templetonprize.org/abouttheprize.html.
“The Foundational Questions”: John Templeton Foundation, “Foundational Questions in Evolutionary Biology (FQEB),” http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grants/foundational-questions-in-evolutionary-biology-fqeb.
the $100,000 Epiphany Prize: Epiphany
Prizes, http://www.epiphanyprizes.com.
the World Science Festival: John Templeton Foundation, “The World Science Festival: Big Ideas Series,” http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grants/the-world-science-festival-big-ideas-series.
Important New Atheist works: Harris 2004, 2006; Dawkins 2006; Dennett 2006; Hitchens 2007a; Stenger 2007.
“I am the way”: John 14:6.
“extraordinary claims require”: Hitchens 2003.
“First, we hypothesize”: Hamelin 2014.
Chapter 2: What’s Incompatible?
“I admit I’m surprised”: Angier 2004, pp. 132–33.
“a testable body of knowledge”: Shermer 2013, p. 208.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself”: Feynman and Leighton 1985, p. 343.
“The interest I have in believing”: Voltaire and Arouet 1763, p. 10: “De plus, l’intérêt que j’ai à croire une chose n’est pas une preuve de l’existence de cette chose.”
“What distinguishes knowledge”: Kaufmann 1958, p. 78.
“confirmed to such a degree”: Gould 1983, p. 255.
But some people take this too far: See Lehrer 2010; Flam 2014; Johnson 2014.
“I can live with doubt”: Richard Feynman, BBC Horizon interview, 1981, transcribed from video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1tKEvN3DF0.
“the dog sniffing tremendously”: Mencken 1922, p. 270.
The participants in the discovery: Tunggal 2013.
“As I prepared to leave Little Rock”: Gould 1982, p. 17.
about 54 percent of the word’s inhabitants: http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html.
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