Jerry Coyne: Faith Versus Fact

Coyne argues that science and religion are incompatible in three ways: methodologically, philosophically, and in the knowledge that they produce. The incompatibility arises because science and religion, though they play very different roles in society, both produce and are grounded on empirical claims about what is true in the universe. And while science, our most sophisticated form of rationality, has a way of determining what is true and eliminating what is false, religion, a form of superstition, does not. While there are thousands of religions, all making incompatible claims about reality, there is only one form of science practiced by researchers throughout the world. After establishing this incompatibility, Jerry Coyne will not only show various ways that believers and theologians have tried to circumvent it, but also how all of their arguments for compatibility have failed.