Coyne Quotes

When we started there was this element of these experiments we were doing where we weren't really sure how the music would play out because the music was all on different players. ~ Wayne Coyne

In a very real sense my science does inform my knowledge of God. If you would allow me to say that we never know God, because if I claim that I know God, I know something other than God, because God is not knowable, he is unknowable. So we have to approach it in that sense first, that my knowledge of God is always limited. ~ George Coyne

I don't know where the sun beams end
and the starlight(start of our lives) begin(s), it's all a mystery
And I don't know how a man decides what's right for his own life, it's all a mystery. ~ Wayne Coyne

With the notion of a theistic god and a vernacular notion of "proof" in hand, we can disprove a god's existence in this way: If a thing is claimed to exist, and its existence has consequences, then the absence of those consequences is evidence against the existence of the thing. In other words, the absence of evidence - if evidence should be there - is indeed evidence of absence. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

I want to be able to shoot laser beams out of my hands at people. That's the kind of stuff that you think all bands should do, but they don't, and I can't understand why most bands don't want to do it. ~ Wayne Coyne

I wish I did believe in God. It would be a great relief to think, 'God'll take care of it. God'll put gas in the car tomorrow' ~ Wayne Coyne

If Christianity gave rise to science between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, then you could give religion credit for everything that humans devised in that period. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

As for my being a horror writer, I actually think horror is a very conservative genre. The horror comes when you do something wrong--when you challenge religion or society or nature--and then you must pay. I personally consider myself a radical, but I publish conservative material. That's quite a paradox. ~ John Coyne

If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

It is clear, then, that whatever genetic heritage we have, it is not a straitjacket that traps us forever in the "beastly" ways of our forebears. Evolution tells us where we came from, not where we can go. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Music has the power to transcend your physical being and take you up. Because music has a metaphysical quality it really makes your life beautiful. ~ Wayne Coyne

Steve Paikin : Can you imagine evolution being unproved someday ?
Jerry A. Coyne : It's possible, there are some facts that could disprove evolution, for example if I dug down into rocks say.. a billion years old and found a fossil of human or a fossil of rabbit and you did that and you were certain enough that these rocks were old, that would completely overthrow darwinism but the fact is, you know, over a 150 years of digging we haven't found a fossil out of place.
[Evolution and Religion - Paul Nelson vs. Jerry Coyne/Denis Lamoureux, 16m40] ~ Jerry A. Coyne

And now he had acquired the wisdom to admit that sometimes experienced his disdain for "weak, sick people" because he was frightened by any suggestion he could ever become that. ~ James C. Coyne

If you've ever seen the movie Spinal Tap, I think you know where we should try and reach by the end of our crime Story. ~ Shawn Coyne

I can't see for the life of me how an attempt to understand the universe, which I believe comes from God, can alienate us from God. ~ George Coyne

Voltaire noted in 1763: The interest I have in believing in something is not a proof that the something exists. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike "harder" scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Since many traits can affect an individual's adaptation to it's environment (it's "fitness") natural selection can over eons sculpt an animal or plant into something that looks designed ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Theology is a subject without an object. Theologians don't study God - they study what other theologians have said. The claims ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Why, exactly, are scientists supposed to accord "respect" to a bunch of ancient fables that are not only ludicrous on their face, but motivate so much opposition to science? ~ Jerry A. Coyne

As a religious priest I find it a very enriching experience to do my scientific research. ~ George Coyne

Love is the thing that you pursue because it's the thing that gives you all this life, or you believe that, anyway. ~ Wayne Coyne

I embrace the idea that I'm an entertainer. ~ Wayne Coyne

I'm pouring my guts out so they can feel like your guts at the same time. ~ Wayne Coyne

You want to be influenced by the world because it has so many cool things about it, but it also has a bunch of bad things about it. ~ Wayne Coyne

Some believers are fundamentalists about everything, but every believer is a fundamentalist about something. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive life form – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves. ~ Wayne Coyne

We now have many of the answers that once eluded Darwin, thanks to two developments that he could not have imagined: continental drift and molecular taxonomy. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

I think today the church faces a very real challenge in not repeating the errors of the past, in sort of a stand off, a fear of science. ~ George Coyne

The hardest part of leaving isn't the looking back; it isn't the loss you feel for a place or people; it's the fear that what you intended to leave isn't ever going to go, and that what you really want, you're never going to get. ~ Teri Coyne

In 186 species showing that a huge variety of male traits are correlated with mating success, and the vast majority of these tests involve female choice. There is simply no doubt that female choice has driven the evolution of many sexual dimorphisms. Darwin was right after all. So far we've neglected two important questions: Why do females get to do the choosing while males must woo or fight for them? And why do females choose at all? To answer these questions we must first understand why organisms bother to have sex. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

One of the marvels of evolution is the Asian giant hornet, a predatory wasp especially common in Japan. It's hard to imagine a more frightening insect. The world's largest hornet, it's as long as your thumb, with a two-inch body bedecked with menacing orange and black stripes. It's armed with fearsome jaws to clasp and kill its insect prey, and a quarter-inch stinger that proves lethal to several dozen Asians a year. And with a three-inch wingspan, it can fly twenty-five miles per hour (far faster than you can run), and can cover sixty miles in a single day. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

I argue that in a world where people must support their opinions with evidence and reason rather than faith, we would experience less conflict over issues like assisted suicide, gay rights, birth control, and sexual morality. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Supernatural explanations always mean the end of inquiry: that's the way God wants it, end of story. Science, on the other hand, is never satisfied: our studies of the universe will continue until humans go extinct. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

I think that anybody who thinks science is going to explain everything in biological systems, or in physical cosmology, et cetera, is actually mistaken, because I think within science - if correctly understood - those claims are not being made. ~ George Coyne

If SANTA CLAUS came down the chimney in a f**king jogging suit, you wouldn't even know it was him. ~ Wayne Coyne

Here haue I cause, in men iust blame to find,
That in their proper prayse too partiall bee,
And not indifferent to woman kind,
To whom no share in armes and cheualrie
They do impart, ne maken memorie
Of their brave gestes and prowess martiall;
Scarse do they spare to one or two or three,
Rowme in their writs; yet the same writing small
Does all their deeds deface, and dims their glories all,
But by record of antique times I find,
That women wont in warres to beare most sway,
And to all great exploits them selues inclind:
Of which they still the girlond bore away,
Till enuious Men fearing their rules decay,
Gan coyne straight laws to curb their liberty;
Yet sith they warlike armes haue layd away:
They haue exceld in artes and policy,
That now we foolish men that prayse gin eke t'enuy. ~ Edmund Spenser

The knowledge of God, the belief in God, is what I call an a-rational process. It's not rational - it doesn't proceed by scientific investigation - but it's not irrational because it doesn't contradict my reasoning process. It goes beyond it. ~ George Coyne

God gave me the gift of faith. I don't mean that in any miraculous sense, I mean through the parents who educated me, through the brothers and sisters I grew up with, the schools I went to, there was this influence upon me which was the faith, in the concrete. I accepted it, I questioned it, I grew up with it, and in the end, as a mature adult, I continue to accept it. ~ George Coyne

To many, evolution gnaws at their sense of self. If evolution offers a lesson, it seems to be that we're not only related to other creatures but, like them, are also the product of blind and impersonal evolutionary forces. If humans are just one of many outcomes of natural selection, maybe we aren't so special after all. You can understand why this doesn't sit well with many people who think that we came into being differently from other species, as the special goal of a divine intention. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

If I have a fundamental belief that the universe is created by God, then I also come to the belief that that universe reflects God, it gives me some knowledge of Him. Obviously, therefore, the more I know of the universe is, the more enriched my limited knowledge of God is. ~ George Coyne

Scientists in general tend to have what I would call a bit of hubris that the public do not necessarily understand. So scientists some times make claims that are misunderstood by the public. ~ George Coyne

Science has only two things to contribute to religion: an analysis of the evolutionary, cultural, and psychological basis for believing things that aren't true, and a scientific disproof of some of faith's claims (e.g., Adam and Eve, the Great Flood). Religion has nothing to contribute to science, and science is best off staying as far away from faith as possible. The "constructive dialogue" between science and faith is, in reality, a destructive monlogue, with science making all the good points, tearing down religion in the process. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Science is and should be seen as "completely neutral" on the issue of the theistic or atheistic implications of scientific results. ~ George Coyne

The Templeton Foundation distributes $70 million yearly in grants and fellowships. To put that in perspective, that's five times the amount dispensed annually by the U.S. National Science Foundation for research in evolutionary biology, one of Templeton's areas of focus. Given Templeton's deep pockets and not overly stringent criteria for dispensing money, it's no wonder that, in a time of reduced financial support, scientists line up for Templeton grants. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

To try to please people is an endless chasing of one's own tail. That's not very satisfying, so we do what we like and that satisfies us. When it does work out, its a bonus, really. ~ Wayne Coyne

Doing science is not inherently incompatible with religious faith. ~ George Coyne

Christianity has always had sort of an ability to absorb the developments in science. But, it's always done it very slowly. ~ George Coyne

I hope I'm not giving the impression of an ivory tower science, but for me science is an attempt to understand, it's an attempt to understand the universe. ~ George Coyne

It was endlessly entertaining, watching people beat each other up. All the little kids in the neighborhood would come and watch ... and then we'd beat them up as well. ~ Wayne Coyne

I think that most of the people I'm dealing with, they're a lot like me. So I'm not pushing people that don't want to do something; most of the people have a billion things going on, and they love it. ~ Wayne Coyne

Take the domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris), a single species that comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and temperaments. Every single one, purebred or mutt, descends from a single ancestral species - most likely the Eurasian gray wolf - that humans began to select about ten thousand years ago. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

There is a lot of melody and things that sound familiar in hundreds of songs. ~ Wayne Coyne

All the world is made of music. We are all strings on a lyre. We resonate. We sing together. ~ Joe Hill

We're getting close to making our vision a reality. It's exciting to be on the cusp of opening our doors to the public. We're right on schedule. ~ James K. Coyne, III

Being around people who are happy and people who are creative, that's what you do if you're lucky in your life. ~ Wayne Coyne

Sometimes you just have to say, " ... I don't know what we are doing, let's just go and see what happens." You have to embrace the experience itself, so that things you didn't intend to happen can make your work more authentic. And you have to hope that it works ~ Wayne Coyne

Selection is both revolutionary and disturbing for the same reason: it explains apparent design in nature by a purely materialistic process that doesn't require creation or guidance by supernatural forces. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Religion is but a single brand of superstition (others include beliefs in astrology, paranormal phenomena, homeopathy, and spiritual healing), but it is the most widespread and harmful form of superstition. And science is but one form of rationality (philosophy and mathematics are others), but it is a highly developed form, and the only one capable of describing and understanding reality. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Science and religion, then, are competitors in the business of finding out what is true about our universe. In this goal religion has failed miserably, for its tools for discerning "truth" are useless. These areas are incompatible in precisely the same way, and in the same sense, that rationality is incompatible with irrationality. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

We are all really alone. We're isolated in our own mind. ~ Wayne Coyne

The battle for evolution seems never-ending. And the battle is part of a wider war, a war between rationality and superstition. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

The Christian church has a long history of gradually absorbing scientific perspectives and new discoveries. It seems to me that, in fact, that has been one of the strengths of Christianity - it has ultimately had great flexibility in absorbing new information about the world that we get from science. ~ George Coyne

I'll accept the pain and the suffering, because I know that in that there's a lot of beauty, too. ~ Wayne Coyne

Religion could never be made compatible with science without diluting it so seriously that it was no longer religion but a humanist philosophy. And so I learned what other opponents of creationism could have told me: that persuading Americans to accept the truth of evolution involved not just an education in facts, but a de-education in faith - the form of belief that replaces the need for evidence with simple emotional commitment. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Because God is reflected in the world in which me made, in some sense, my scientific investigation has always supported my belief in God in a very real sense. It helps me to pray better. ~ George Coyne

You can say that Wayne Coyne sounds like Neil Young. ~ Mike Lowry

I remember when my father was dying, I remember listening to Bjork, and listening to John Coltrane, and these things, and I don't know why but music has the power to transcend your physical being and take you up just a little bit. ~ Wayne Coyne

My claim is this: science and religion are incompatible because they have different methods for getting knowledge about reality, have different ways of assessing the reliability of that knowledge, and, in the end, arrive at conflicting conclusions about the universe. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

I have never come to know God, to see God, to believe in God through doing science. He's not the conclusion of some sort of process of my personal scientific investigation. ~ George Coyne

Everything that you do in your life that helps you sweat is good for you. ~ Wayne Coyne

When I do yoga, it gets all sweaty, and the best thing for dried up hair isn't shampoo, it's sweat. ~ Wayne Coyne

Many people require more than just evidence before they'll accept evolution. To these folks,
evolution raises such profound questions of purpose, morality, and meaning that they just can't accept it no matter how much evidence they see. It's not that we evolved from apes that bothers them so much; it's [[the emotional consequences of facing that fact.]] And unless we address those concerns, we won't progress in making evolution a universally acknowledged truth. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

What The Story Grid offers is a way for you, the writer, to evaluate whether or not your Story is working at the level of a publishable professional. If it is, The Story Grid will make it even better. If it isn't, The Story Grid will show you where and why it isn't working - and how to fix what's broken. ~ Shawn Coyne

There's a cave, we go inside of ourselves because we want to know more, and we turn this one corner and we go, Oh my god - I didn't know that was in here. We can never go back to the way we were. It's like a horrible car accident - you're never the same after that. It's something that you'll think about every day for the rest of your life. ~ Wayne Coyne

If a thing is claimed to exist, and its existence has consequences, then the absence of those consequences is evidence against the existence of the thing. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured. ~ Andrew Coyne

Every time you use a GPS device, a computer, or a cell phone, you're reaping the benefits of science. In fact, most of us regularly trust our very lives to science: when you have an operation, when you fly in an airplane, when you get your children vaccinated. If you were diagnosed with diabetes, would you go to the doctor or consult a spiritual healer? ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Love is not a magic gravity that keeps everything up. ~ Wayne Coyne

Anything they have to advertise is something you don't need. ~ Kelly Coyne

The Copernican revolution was actually a contribution to the life of the church, the development of our view of ourselves in terms of the Universe, and therefore our view of God, et cetera. But, that took centuries, and struggles, and conflicts before that happened. ~ George Coyne

Nothing we learn about the universe threatens our faith. It only enriches it. ~ George Coyne

The things that affect you most deeply - the things that will destroy you if you don't sing about them - are the things that you often end up singing about. It's really just about saying those things that everybody thinks but no one will say and making a connection by uncovering these diamonds that are inside of all of us that no one wants to tell each other about. ~ Wayne Coyne

What we do or don't do when we face conflict is the engine of Storytelling. ~ Shawn Coyne

Faith may be a gift in religion, but in science it's poison, for faith is no way to find truth. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

After you plant a seed in the ground, you don't dig it up every week to see how it is doing ~ William J. Coyne

All the great things that I get to be curious about, see, and experience because I'm sensitive to the world, it also opens up these areas where there's a lot of pain and suffering. You're just aware, aware, aware. ~ Wayne Coyne

People like to stop reading when they've finished a chapter, not in the middle of a chapter. This is probably the last thing they'll tell you at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, but it's a reality ~ Shawn Coyne

I am not that thrilled about the way our records sound anyway. Don't get me wrong, I work hard on them and I want them to sound fantastic but I'm happy to have another interpretation of them anyway. ~ Wayne Coyne

He said that my problem was that I was perfectly healthy and had the illusion that I would be able bodied forever. I could only begin understanding his problem if I gave up that illusion and that would be very difficult, given how healthy I was. I understand, I mistakenly said, and he said no you don't. ~ James C. Coyne

The biogeographic evidence for evolution is now so powerful that I have never seen a creationist book, article, or lecture that has tried to refute it. Creationists simply pretend that the evidence doesn't exist. Ironically, ~ Jerry A. Coyne

When we went to cover it I thought we would change it to a song of loving and longing instead of the sex machine song Kylie turned it into. I've met Kylie and told her we were covering her song and she was pleased. ~ Wayne Coyne

Two-thousand-word scenes/chapters are potato chip length. That is, if you are about to go to bed and you're reading a terrific novel and the scenes/chapters come in around two-thousand-word bites, you'll tell yourself that you'll read just one more chapter. But if the narrative is really moving after you finish one of these bites, you won't be able to help yourself reading another. If the Story is extremely well told, you'll just keep eating the potato chip scenes all through the night. ~ Shawn Coyne

Surveying American scientists as a whole, Pew Research showed that 33 percent admitted belief in God, while 41 percent were atheists (the rest either didn't answer, didn't know, or believed in a "universal spirit or higher power"). In contrast, belief in God among the general public ran at 83 percent and atheism at only 4 percent. In other words, scientists are ten times more likely to be atheists than are other Americans. This disparity has persisted for over eighty years of polling. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Here's a simple example. The wooly mammoth inhabited the northern parts of Eurasia and North America, and was adapted to the cold by bearing a thick coat of hair (entire frozen specimens have been found buried in the tundra).3 It probably descended from mammoth ancestors that had little hair - like modern elephants. Mutations in the ancestral species led to some individual mammoths-like some modern humans - being hairier than others. When the climate became cold, or the species spread into more northerly regions, the hirsute individuals were better able to tolerate their frigid surroundings, and left more offspring than their balder counterparts. This enriched the population in genes for hairiness. In the next generation, the average mammoth would be a bit hairier than before. Let this process continue over some thousands of generations, and your smooth mammoth gets replaced by a shaggy one. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

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! ~ Jerry A. Coyne

We love playing music but we're too weird to play music. ~ Wayne Coyne

Our publicist at Warner Brothers is a young guy who has worked so hard for seven years with us and when we saw him backstage he broke down and cried. He couldn't believe it happened. It was seeing him so overcome when we realised how much it really meant. ~ Wayne Coyne

We hear so many records these days that are done with click tracks, as opposed to a drummer. ~ Wayne Coyne