"In religion faith is a virtue; in science it's a vice."

Author and biologist Jerry Coyne wrote an opinion piece in USA Today arguing that science and religion are simply not compatible with each other.

In all honesty, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. It's not that I disagree with him, because logically, I can't find a single fault with what he said. He's right. It's just that drawing these "either/or" lines in the sand will only serve to turn religious people off towards science altogether, and then nobody wins. I mean, everything about science is fucking beautiful, and there's no reason why it can't be enjoyed and admired by everyone. I know plenty of Christians who love science. I know a believer who's going to be a biomedical engineer. I just don't think coming out so strongly and so openly helps anything if your goal is to convince others. It will only turn people away. (This rule is ignored if Christopher Hitchens is speaking, because come on, that shit's just hilarious.)

But you can't really argue with Coyne's main point: religion and science view 'truth' in two completely different ways.

Science operates by using evidence and reason. Doubt is prized, authority rejected. No finding is deemed "true" — a notion that's always provisional — unless it's repeated and verified by others. We scientists are always asking ourselves, "How can I find out whether I'm wrong?" I can think of dozens of potential observations, for instance — one is a billion-year-old ape fossil — that would convince me that evolution didn't happen.

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And this leads to the biggest problem with religious "truth": There's no way of knowing whether it's true. I've never met a Christian, for instance, who has been able to tell me what observations about the universe would make him abandon his beliefs in God and Jesus. (I would have thought that the Holocaust could do it, but apparently not.) There is no horror, no amount of evil in the world, that a true believer can't rationalize as consistent with a loving God. It's the ultimate way of fooling yourself. But how can you be sure you're right if you can't tell whether you're wrong?

The religious approach to understanding inevitably results in different faiths holding incompatible "truths" about the world. Many Christians believe that if you don't accept Jesus as savior, you'll burn in hell for eternity. Muslims hold the exact opposite: Those who see Jesus as God's son are the ones who will roast. Jews see Jesus as a prophet, but not the messiah. Which belief, if any, is right? Because there's no way to decide, religions have duked it out for centuries, spawning humanity's miserable history of religious warfare and persecution.

In contrast, scientists don't kill each other over matters such as continental drift. We have better ways to settle our differences. There is no Catholic science, no Hindu science, no Muslim science — just science, a multicultural search for truth. The difference between science and faith, then, can be summed up simply: In religion faith is a virtue; in science it's a vice.

If you value your non-existent soul, do yourself a favor and avoid the comments. Or, go ahead and read them if you want to laugh at idiots. And I'll plug Coyne's book on evolution while I have your attention, it's probably the best crash course introduction to the subject short of The Origin of Species.