Reddit mentions of Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible

That's one of my favorite popular science books, so it's wonderful to hear you're getting so much out of it. It really is a fascinating topic, and it's sad that so many Christians close themselves off to it solely to protect their religious beliefs (though as you discovered, it's good for those religious beliefs that they do).

As a companion to the book you might enjoy the Stated Clearly series of videos, which break down evolution very simply (and they're made by an ex-Christian whose education about evolution was part of his reason for leaving the religion). You might also like Coyne's blog, though these days it's more about his personal views than it is about evolution (but some searching on the site will bring up interesting things he's written on a whole host of religious topics from Adam and Eve to "ground of being" theology). He does also have another book you might like (Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible), though I only read part of it since I was familiar with much of it from his blog.

> If you guys have any other book recommendations along these lines, I'm all ears!

You should definitely read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, if only because it's a classic (and widely misrepresented/misunderstood). A little farther afield, one of my favorite popular science books of all time is The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, which looks at human language as an evolved ability. Pinker's primary area of academic expertise is child language acquisition, so he's the most in his element in that book.

If you're interested in neuroscience and the brain you could read How the Mind Works (also by Pinker) or The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, both of which are wide-ranging and accessibly written. I'd also recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Evolution gets a lot of attention in ex-Christian circles, but books like these are highly underrated as antidotes to Christian indoctrination -- nothing cures magical thinking about the "soul", consciousness and so on as much as learning how the brain and the mind actually work.

If you're interested in more general/philosophical works that touch on similar themes, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach made a huge impression on me (years ago). You might also like The Mind's I by Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, which is a collection of philosophical essays along with commentaries. Books like these will get you thinking about the true mysteries of life, the universe and everything -- the kind of mysteries that have such sterile and unsatisfying "answers" within Christianity and other mythologies.

Don't worry about the past -- just be happy you're learning about all of this now. You've got plenty of life ahead of you to make up for any lost time. Have fun!

https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Versus-Fact-Religion-Incompatible/dp/0143108263/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0143108263&pd_rd_r=RBSYGCN2TFMSJG9N9A5N&pd_rd_w=dyrKf&pd_rd_wg=ZCWLt&psc=1&refRID=RBSYGCN2TFMSJG9N9A5N

Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible by Jerry A. Coyne

“Faith Versus Fact" is an excellent book that presents the persuasive argument that while faith and science compete to describe reality; science is the best tool to find out what is true about our universe. Evolutionary geneticist Jerry A. Coyne follows up his masterpiece of Why Evolution Is True, with an outstanding book of its own that clearly separates science from religion. This persuasive 336-page book includes the following five chapters: 1. The Problem, 2. What’s Incompatible?, 3. Why Accommodationism Fails, 4. Faith Strikes Back, and 5. Why Does It Matter?

Positives:

1. Professor Coyne is a persuasive writer. Well-written and well-reasoned book. Engaging and accessible.
   
2. A great topic; why science and religion are incompatible.
   
3. Great use of logic, history, reason and facts to persuade the audience at an accessible level.
   
4. A quote fest, “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it by Neil deGrasse Tyson”.
   
5. Clearly states his main thesis. “…understanding reality, in the sense of being able to use what we know to predict what we don’t, is best achieved using the tools of science, and is never achieved using the methods of faith.” “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.”
   
6. Makes a very strong case that there are very clear differences between science and religion. “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.”
   
7. The three reasons why the issue of science versus religion has been revived. “The conflict between religion and evolution didn’t really get going until religious fundamentalism arose in early-twentieth-century America.”
   
8. An expose of the Templeton foundation.
   
9. Clarity and lucidity of thought throughout the book. “These are empirical claims, and although some may be hard to test, they must, like all claims about reality, be defended with a combination of evidence and reason. If we find no credible evidence, no good reasons to believe, then those claims should be disregarded, just as most of us ignore claims about ESP, astrology, and alien abduction.”
   
10. A good explanation of what constitutes science. “What is “known” may sometimes change, so science isn’t really a fixed body of knowledge. What remains is what I really see as “science,” which is simply a method for understanding how the universe (matter, our bodies and behavior, the cosmos, and so on) actually works. Science is a set of tools, refined over hundreds of years, for getting answers about nature.” “Scientific truth is never absolute, but provisional.”
    
11. Provocative. “There is simply no way that any faith can prove beyond question that its claims are true while those of other faiths are false.”
    
12. The problems with religion. “Religion begins with beliefs based not on observation, but on revelation, authority (often that of scripture), and dogma.” “Take the Resurrection of Jesus, for which the only supporting evidence is the contradictory accounts of the Gospels.”
    
13. Clearly explains why accommodationism fails and does a great job of dissecting the problems with non-overlapping magisterial (NOMA) that popularized Gould. “In the end, NOMA is simply an unsatisfying quarrel about labels that, unless you profess a watery deism, cannot reconcile science and religion.”
    
14. Miracles in perspective. “Miracles were really the result of fraud, ignorance, or misrepresentation.”
    
15. Destroys myths with expertise. “But science has completely falsified the idea of a historical Adam and Eve, and on two grounds. First, our species wasn’t poofed into being by a sudden act of creation. We know beyond reasonable doubt that we evolved from a common ancestor with modern chimps, an ancestor living around six million years ago. Modern human traits—which include our brain and genetically determined behaviors—evolved gradually.”
    
16. Mormonism takes a direct hit. “But as with the existence of Adam and Eve, both genetics and archaeology have shown that the Middle Eastern origin of Native Americans is a fiction.” Game over.
    
17. Morality as it relates to evolution. “Finally, and perhaps most important, evolution means that human morality, rather than being imbued in us by God, somehow arose via natural processes: biological evolution involving natural selection on behavior, and cultural evolution involving our ability to calculate, foresee, and prefer the results of different behaviors.” “We have an enhanced morality but it is the product of culture, not biology.”
    
18. Looks at popular arguments in defense of “God” only to reject them with ease. “Rather than assuming that the world was created for humans, the more reasonable hypothesis is that humans evolved to adapt to the world they confronted.”
    
19. The faith in reason tactic. “My response to the ‘no justification’ claim is that the superiority of science at finding objective truth comes not from philosophy but from experience. Science gives predictions that work. Everything we know about biology, the cosmos, physics, and chemistry has come through science—not revelation, the arts, or any other ‘way of knowing.’”
    
20. The harm of ill-founded dogma. “The harm, as I’ve said repeatedly, comes not from the existence of religion itself, but from its reliance on and glorification of faith—belief, or, if you will, ‘trust’ or ‘confidence’—without supporting evidence.”
    
21. Notes and references included.
    
    Negatives:
    
22. Why Evolution Is True was such a great book it’s hard to live up to those lofty expectations.
    
23. Philosophy and theology is not Coyne’s forte but he provides enough to make his case.
    
24. Lack of charts and visuals to complement the narrative.
    
25. I would have liked to have seen a bit more on the legal side. Examples of religion doing harm and a summary of cases where science and religion intersect besides the obligatory mention of the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial”.
    
    In summary, a book worthy of five stars. Sure it’s not the masterpiece that I Why Evolution Is True but it’s a book that needed to be written and is another great contribution to society. Religion fails to accurately describe the universe as it really is and in fact has impeded progress. Coyne makes the persuasive case that science is the best method to find the truths about his world and you will not get any disagreement for yours truly. An excellent book, I highly recommend it!
    
    Further suggestions: “Why Evolution Is True” by the same author, “Undeniable” by Bill Nye, “God and the Multiverse” by Victor J. Stenger, “Science and Religion” by Daniel C. Dennett, “Why People Believe Weird Things” by Michael Shermer, “Atheism for Dummies” by Dale McGowan, “The Soul Fallacy” by Julien Musolino, “Why Are You Atheists So Angry?: 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless” by Greta Christina, “A Manual for Creating Atheists” by Peter Boghosian, “God Is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, “The God Virus” by Darrel Ray, “Moral Combat” by Sikivu Hutchinson, “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “Nonbeliever Nation” by David Niose, “Freethinkers” by Susan Jacoby, “Nailed” by David Fitzgerald, and “Think” by Guy P. Harrison.
    
    Maybe read this after reading Why Evolution is True? Have you bought the book yet?

Jerry Coyne is a good 'go to person' for religion versus science questions.

I don't remember the specific details, but he has a lecture on youtube where he says he looked into the creationist peer-reviewed articles for a specific number of years compared with scientific peer-reviewed articles. The creationists had zero. The scientific had 1200, and that was only for the scientists who's last name began with an A. (Something to that effect.)

I'm convinced that creationists are either blatantly dishonest or willfully ignorant. I cannot see how anyone with a desire to know the truth is unable to be convinced that evolution is a correct understanding of how life functions on our planet.

Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Two books you should probably read are:

God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger

and

Faith Vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible by Jerry Coyne

https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Versus-Fact-Religion-Incompatible/dp/0143108263