Meribeth Coyne Quotes

God, beauty, and your dreams are the only things really worth pursuing. When you do, you will find that they have all along been pursuing you." Marianne Coyne ~ Marianne Coyne

We want, or wanted, to believe that without love we would disappear, that love, somehow, would save us that, yeah, if we have love, give love and know love, we are truly alive and if there is no love, there would be no life. The Terror is, we know now, that even without love, life goes on ... we just go on there is no mercy killing. ~ Wayne 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

The technological overflow from scientific research has brought scientific research this bad name about carrying an irresponsibility and an alienation from God - because scientific research has led to things like the atom bomb, it's led to problems with depletion of ozone in the Earth's atmosphere, or at least it's revealed those problems. ~ 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

What distinguishes knowledge is not certainty but evidence. ~ 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

Because of the hegemony of fundamentalist religion in the United States, this country has been among the most resistant to the fact of human evolution. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Harmonizing religion and science makes you seem like an open-minded and reasonable person, while asserting their incompatibility makes enemies and brands you as "militant." The reason is clear: religion occupies a privileged place in our society. Attacking it is off-limits, although going after other supernatural or paranormal beliefs like ESP, homeopathy, or political worldviews is not. Accommodationism is not meant to defend science, which can stand on its own, but to show that in some way religion can still make credible claims about the world. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

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

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

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

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

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

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

However the great successes of science - Galileo's telescopic observations, Newton's law of gravity, etc - all of this great success caused people to sort of say, what if we could establish religion on that same successful basis? What if we could have a good rational foundation for religious belief. What if religion could be sort of like science. Of course, that can't be. ~ George 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

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

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

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

We love it when we make mistakes that are better than something you could think up. ~ Wayne Coyne

I stopped caring so much about what people might think if I sung about love and humanity. ~ Wayne Coyne

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

Theology is the post hoc rationalization of what you want to believe. ~ Jerry A. 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

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

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

Even in the beginning, when we knew there was a legal argument about how much our song sounds like his song, as one songwriter to another, I wasn't sure that Cat Stevens would take that as bad. ~ Wayne Coyne

How can you derive meaning, purpose, or ethics from evolution? You can't. Evolution is simply a theory about the process and patterns of life's diversification, not a grand philosophical scheme about the meaning of life. It can't tell us what to do, or how we should behave. And this is the big problem for many believers, who want to find in the story of our origins a reason for our existence, and a sense of how to behave. ~ 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

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

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

One of the more remarkable demonstrations of this resistance occurred in September 2013, when a group of parents, with the help of a conservative legal institute, filed suit against the Kansas State Board of Education. Their goal was to overturn the entire set of state science standards from kindergarten through twelfth grade, arguing that those standards gave students a "materialistic atheistic" worldview that was inimical to their religion. Just as this book went to press, the lawsuit was dismissed. ~ Jerry A. 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

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

Allow yourself to think that the possibility of failure is a necessary part of parenting well ... Avoiding the possibility of failure means avoiding the possibility of being an extraordinary parent-and avoiding what you want for your child. ~ Lisa Coyne

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

As you get older, you accept that there are some tunnels that don't have any light in them, but you go down them anyway. ~ Wayne Coyne

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

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