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The conflation of faith as “unevidenced belief” with its vernacular use as “confidence based on experience” is simply a word trick used to buttress religion.

— Jerry Coyne Faith vs. Fact (2015)

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More quotes by Jerry Coyne

Everyone else besides the faithful already knows that religion has nothing useful to say to science.

It is curious that those who claim such firm knowledge about God’s nature and works become silent when asked about God’s methods.

Faith vs. Fact (2015)

Faith is not a virtue, but a character flaw.

It is time to stop seeing faith as a virtue, and to stop using the term “person of faith” as a compliment.

Faith vs. Fact (2015)

Any “knowledge” incapable of being revised with advances in data and human thinking does not deserve the name of knowledge.

Faith vs. Fact (2015)

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Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to Peter Carr (1787)

I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.

Colin Wilson Postscript to the Outsider (1967)

Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."

Jonathan Edwards Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jerry Coyne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.