Jerry Coyne seems to be a Four Horseman wannbe who never was. But now with the death of Christopher Hitchens there is a horseman opening, a chance to be a New Atheist if he can pass the exam. Maybe this article is the exam, I don’t know. But Coyne has been a divisive force who reviews books which he admits that he hasn’t read, and severely irritating the likes of Massimo Pigliucci, who didn’t give Coyne (or Dawkins for that matter) an article in “The Extended Synthesis” tome, which is the new evolutionary bible.
Coyne has declared that “evolution is true” and has a book and website by the same name to prove it. What Coyne proves is just that people like himself define words to suit themselves - words like "true". In
his Slate article, Coyne makes several such adventures into words and concepts, which he panders as more truth.
So let’s take a look at his propositions in his Slate article.
His first proposition is that science is based on evidence while religion is based on “faith in the invisible”. After giving his examples of what he thinks are faith statements, he quotes,
“faith as defined by philosopher Walter Kaufmann:
‘intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.’”
If you are familiar with Coyne, his website and his book, that statement describes him precisely. A case of projection, maybe? His faith in evolution can easily be shown to be faith in the invisible.
Then Coyne asserts,
“Indeed, there is no evidence beyond revelation, authority, and scripture to support the religious claims above, and most of the world’s believers would reject at least one of them. To state it bluntly, such faith involves pretending to know things you don’t.”
Let's ignore for the time being that there are more ways than science to know a thing. Here Coyne is implying that science does know things without pretense. That is false in many cases, most certainly in the inference of evolution, Coyne's focus.
In the case of science, pretense has been a fundamental tactic ever since Darwin made inference a
“legitimate” form of
"knowledge". This is primarily because Atheists grabbed ahold of a Materialist origins story, and declared it true: ideologically and unassailably. Finding animal types in certain geologic layers became
inferred as progression. Finding different finches in the Galapagos became
inferred as evolution. However, as far as objective, experimental, immutable truth, that did not exist; so it had to be asserted legally. The ideology
has to be accepted without what Coyne refers to reverentially as,
“confidence derived from scientific tests and repeated, documented experience.”
There is no set of
scientific tests nor
repeated documented experience for the creation of birds from dinosaurs, nor of dinosaurs from sponges, nor of sponges from minerals. So Coyne’s very definition of science does not match what he actually believes and does for a living. But it is a convenient fiction, useful for attacking his target of the moment, which is the abstraction, “religion”.
In his book, Why Evolution Is True, Coyne indulges himself with story-telling as near-fact, not exactly fact, but good enough stories to make him ecstatic with evolution. He admits to many things not being known, but the stories are good’ns, good enough to call evolution “True”. Hence the new definition of "true". As for birds, he starts off with stories to fill in the knowledge blanks – blanks which are huge and encompass pretty much the entire affair of where birds came from. Wrote Coyne,
“But if you think a bit, it’s not so hard to come up with intermediate stages in the evolution of flight, stages the might have been useful to their possessors. Gliding is the obvious first step…”
And so goes the story, being created as a complete fiction which is imbued with the aura of truth in order to salvage the ideology. Eight pages later, Coyne is still at it:
“In either the “trees down’ or the ‘ground up’ scenario, natural selection could begin to favor individuals who could fly farther instead of merely gliding, leaping, or flying for short bursts. Then would come the other innovations shared by modern birds, including hollow bones for lightness and that large breastbone.”
And that story, you see, is Why Evolution Is True.
” The conflation of faith as “unevidenced belief” with faith as “justified confidence” is simply a word trick used to buttress religion. In fact, you’ll never hear a scientist saying, “I have faith in evolution” or “I have faith in electrons.” Not only is such language alien to us, but we know full well how those words can be misused in the name of religion.”
Whether they say it or not, scientists evince faith in hypothesis U due to the probability of its validity due to successful replication of experiments done on U. Denying that is merely absurd, or in Coyne's case, it is irrational denialism in the pursuit of an ideology. Whatever it is, it is not true.
Coyne falls into traps of his own making so regularly that people in his own discipline comment on it. Here is one now:
”What about the public and other scientists’ respect for authority? Isn’t that a kind of faith? Not really. When Richard Dawkins talks or writes about evolution, or Lisa Randall about physics, scientists in other fields—and the public—have confidence that they’re right. But that, too, is based on the doubt and criticism inherent in science (but not religion): the understanding that their expertise has been continuously vetted by other biologists or physicists. In contrast, a priest’s claims about God are no more demonstrable than anyone else’s. We know no more now about the divine than we did 1,000 years ago.”
It is absolutely faith that the energy bursts which were ferreted out of the considerable noise were actually due to a Higgs Boson. Not only is the boson not directly observable, it is not even secondarily observable because its energy (mass) is also not observable except fractionally, and the fraction could very conceivably be something else. One thing is certain: evolutionary biologists will always refer to physics which they don’t comprehend in order to gain “authority” as being “scientific”.
But let’s take his last comments separately. Specifically,
” In contrast, a priest’s claims about God are no more demonstrable than anyone else’s. We know no more now about the divine than we did 1,000 years ago.”
By “demonstrable”, Coyne means that the divine is not investigable by material science, and therefore is illegitimately called knowledge. The illegitimacy is conferred as the result of abject Philosophical Materialism, a philosophy which also is illegitimately called knowledge and is not investigable by emprical, experimental science - yet is the foundation of Atheism and is misused in claims as the foundation for science, which it is not. Science – empirical experimental objective science - is voluntarily functionally materialist purely because only material things can be investigated experimentally. So Coyne’s comment is merely a slur, not an assertion with actual meaning.
The bottom line is that a priest’s claims are never made with material demostrability in mind. Whether Coyne thinks that is illegitimate is of no concern, because his evolution claims are also not demonstrable materially.
”What about the public and other scientists’ respect for authority? Isn’t that a kind of faith? Not really. When Richard Dawkins talks or writes about evolution, or Lisa Randall about physics, scientists in other fields—and the public—have confidence that they’re right. But that, too, is based on the doubt and criticism inherent in science (but not religion): the understanding that their expertise has been continuously vetted by other biologists or physicists. In contrast, a priest’s claims about God are no more demonstrable than anyone else’s. We know no more now about the divine than we did 1,000 years ago.”
By the nature of his book and website, there is no inherent “doubt and criticism” involved in Coyne’s world, regardless of what he claims when facing the public. For Coyne as well as a great many other people making a living from inferential evolution stories, the science is settled, there is no objection which can be legitimate, the mental doors are shut and locked, all based merely on Just So Stories.
There is no “doubt or criticism inherent in religion”? Because he uses the cartoon word, the generalization: “religion”, he can be partly right while being entirely wrong. There are some fundamentalists in religions (just like Coyne being a fundamentalist in “science”), who claim to have “truth”. But that is not likely the general case. For most there is enough evidence to engender hope; and that, hope, is what Coyne actually has but he calls it truth instead. What Coyne does continually is to make sweeping generalizations about things about which he knows nothing – things such as religion and the evolution of birds – and then to call his generalizations “truth”, when they are nothing of the sort.
” The constant scrutiny of our peers ensures that science is largely self-correcting, so that we really can approach the truth about our universe.”
He is stealing legitimacy again. This does not apply to evolutionary biology in the manner which it applies to experimental biology. Evolution is dictated to the point that dissenting opinion cannot be expressed, lest it unleash a purge; it would and it has. And evolution is not about the universe; it is not even about biology because biology can be done entirely without evolution. Again Coyne attempts to legitimize his own story-telling schema on the backs of other, respectable, sciences.
” So scientists don’t have a quasi-religious faith in authorities, books, or propositions without empirical support.”
This is so egregiously false that it can only be an intentional lie. Coyne’s one book is loaded with untestable claims in support of conclusions which are not in the least supported empirically.
It gets worse.
” Do we have faith in anything? Two objects of scientific faith are said to be physical laws and reason. Doing science, it is said, requires unevidenced faith in the “orderliness of nature” and an “unexplained set of physical laws,” as well as in the value of reason in determining truth.
Both claims are wrong.
The orderliness of nature—the set of so-called natural laws—is not an assumption but an observation.”
Even the Atheist “empiricist”, David Hume knew better than that, and condemned anyone who claimed such. Orderliness is not guaranteed, either in the future or in the past.
Further, the orderliness of nature at the quantum level does not exist; Apparently Coyne’s attachment to physics as a big brother for protecting evolution does not include the physics of Quantum Mechanics. But wait, he weasels:
” We take nature as we find it, and sometimes it behaves predictably.”
It is predictable “sometimes”? Really?
And there is this, which is the reason that Coyne is not a philosopher and certainly not a logician:
” What about faith in reason? Wrong again. Reason—the habit of being critical, logical, and of learning from experience—is not an a priori assumption but a tool that’s been shown to work. It’s what produced antibiotics, computers, and our ability to sequence DNA. We don’t have faith in reason; we use reason because, unlike revelation, it produces results and understanding. Even discussing why we should use reason employs reason!”
You don’t have faith in your “tool” because it is a “tool”. You don’t have faith in reason because you use reason to discuss reason. By now Jerry has slipped the coils of rationality altogether.
” Finally, isn’t science at least based on the faith that it’s good to know the truth? Hardly. The notion that knowledge is better than ignorance is not a quasi-religious faith, but a preference: We prefer to know what’s right because what’s wrong usually doesn’t work.”
And yet it is likely that most scientists would describe their pursuits as having purely intellectual interest, with unknown practical applications. In fact, science is considered a success when it shows that something doesn’t work. This is part of knowing the factoids, and that is good. Coyne has split this hair into meaningless definitional drivel. He is motivated purely by the need to deny faith as an aspect of science, despite the faith he has in his story-models necessary for evolution to be “true”.
Finally he appeals to Dawkins:
” There's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation.”
As if Dawkins has any evidence or logic which proves his belief in evolution and Atheism to be True. Just like Hitchens’ Razor, Dawkins comments have no proof for the truth value of the assertion being made. They are thus internally non-coherent.
So maybe Coyne and Dawkins can get together on the fourth horseman opening...
