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  • Published: 15 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143108269
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

Faith Versus Fact

Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible





From the New York Times bestselling author of Why Evolution is True comes a clear, dispassionate explanation of why religion has no place in science.

“A superbly argued book.” —Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion

  The New York Times bestselling author of Why Evolution is True explains why any attempt to make religion compatible with science is doomed to fail
 
In this provocative book, evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne lays out in clear, dispassionate detail why the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion—including faith, dogma, and revelation—leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions.
 
Coyne is responding to a national climate in which more than half of Americans don’t believe in evolution, members of Congress deny global warming, and long-conquered childhood diseases are reappearing because of religious objections to inoculation, and he warns that religious prejudices in politics, education, medicine, and social policy are on the rise. Extending the bestselling works of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, he demolishes the claims of religion to provide verifiable “truth” by subjecting those claims to the same tests we use to establish truth in science.
 
Coyne irrefutably demonstrates the grave harm—to individuals and to our planet—in mistaking faith for fact in making the most important decisions about the world we live in.

Praise for Faith Versus Fact:

“A profound and lovely book . . . showing that the honest doubts of science are better . . . than the false certainties of religion.” —Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith

  • Published: 15 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143108269
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

Praise for Faith Versus Fact

"The distinguished geneticist Jerry Coyne trains his formidable intellectual firepower on religious faith, and it's hard to see how any reasonable person can resist the conclusions of his superbly argued book."--Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion

"In this timely and important book, Jerry Coyne expertly exposes the incoherence of the increasingly popular belief that you can have it both ways: that God (or something God-ish, God-like, or God-oid) sort-of exists; that miracles kind-of happen; and that the truthiness of dogma is somewhat-a-little-bit-more-or-less-who's-to-say-it-isn't like the truths of science and reason."--Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature

"[N]one make the case for the final divorce of religion and science, with permanent restraining orders against harassment and stalking of science by religion, better than Coyne."--Ray Olson, Booklist (starred review)