The paperback edition of Faith Versus Fact will be available on May 17, and it will have a fancy gold band on the cover instead of the drabbish band (which was supposed to be shiny gold) that was on the hardcover. It’s about fifteen bucks in the U.S., and you can preorder it from Amazon, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and, as always, the audio version is available from several of those places or from iTunes.
Pre-orders are best for promoting the book, of course, but I’ll be chuffed whenever you buy it. And, as always, if you encounter me in person, I’ll be glad to sign it (or WEIT) for you.
Release date is my birthday, so good reason to self gift! Just pre-ordered on Amazon.
Yay!! Hopefully now I can afford it!!
Due to exorbitant import duties, the book is really out of reach for customers in India. It costs about Indian Rupees 1500, which, as a recent visitor to India, you may appreciate, is not everyone’s cup of tea, where the upper limit for what people usually spend on books is close to Rs. 500 at best. It’s a bummer.
I bought the hardcover already. I loved how easy it was to read. I am passing it on to family members who agree with your conclusions but have a hard time talking to religious people who want to argue. I can’t thank you enough for writing this book.
Any idea who does the audio book? I haven’t seen PCC saying anything about spending a week in a recording studio, so …
Hang on, does iTunes let you read information without an account? (The question occurs to me for the first time in my life.)
Hmmm, no mention of an audiobook in iTunes. Ah, found it on Amazon.Co.UK as “Joe Barrett (Narrator).” Prices are all over the place though – anything from £12 to £43.
It’s not Morgan Freeman doing the audiobook narration?
Speaking of which, just watch The Story of God tonight on National Geographic. It’s about creation and it discusses the origin of humans and the universe. Spoiler alert: There is no mention of evolution and religion is portrayed as much more science friendly than it actually is.
I thought the series started okay, but it now rapidly descends into pseudo-scientific garbage.
With my Kindle edition, I can have FvF with me wherever I go (along with WEIT.) Unfortunately, you can’t autograph it. I will buy a hard copy if I ever get to meet you.
I would like to encourage you and your readers to buy your books and other titles at local independent bookstores or through their websites (see indiebound.org for one in your area). At a local independent bookstore you are likely to meet interesting, often like-minded, or at least open-minded booksellers & other customers. Amazon has too much control. Independent bookstores support local authors and free expression. You can pre-order at your local shop, insuring the book will be stocked on the publication date.
You are quite right, and I admit I failed in this regard, reflexively opting for expediency and (alleged) comfort rather than a category of different and far more satisfying comforts and principles with which I am certainly intimate.
Full Disclosure: I’m a librarian, egad, and I bought the Kindle versions. That won’t happen again. It may sound to some like I’m making too large an issue out of this, but again, I agree with you, Laura. With illness, injury, and unemployment, I have lost sight of the thrill of full visceral experience of books, and my own library has countless volumes tattooed with my own hasty scribble in the margins, to be sure. Thanks for reminding me of some things which are truly important. Be well.
Hopefully by the time you make it to Australia, there will be a way to sign the kindle edition. 😛
Glad I didn;t wait, I got the hardcover
Me too1 A great read….
yes. informative and rational
Mr. Coyne,
Have you given any thought to coming to Milwaukee and appearing at Boswell Books to talk about F vs. F?
Ellie Schmoeger
________________________________
Prof Coyne you’re being name checked by the defenders of Judeo-Christian values which you and Dawkins (among others) are severely undermining with your godless atheism etc etc etc
http://blogs.christianpost.com/science-and-faith/richard-weikart-on-the-revealing-inconsistencies-of-scientific-materialism-27534/
Weikart returns once more to Dawkins’s inconsistent proclamations:
Where did Dawkins get the idea that cooperation, unselfishness, and generosity are morally superior to selfishness and cutthroat competition? Why does he favor the welfare state helping the poor and disadvantaged, rather than letting them starve? He admits that these moral precepts do not come from nature. Where then did he get these extra-natural (dare I say, supernatural?) moral standards that he encourages us to uphold and teach? They certainly did not arise from his own worldview, which denies the existence of any extra-natural morality. (p. 115)
Weikart catches many other scientists and materialist philosophers in similar instances of self-contradiction. These include a few who are no longer alive, but who have many intellectual descendants today: August Comte (p. 30-32), Charles Darwin (p. 54-55), and Bertrand Russell (p. 37-41). The living self-contradicting thinkers canvassed in Weikart’s book include (besides Dawkins) Lawrence Krauss (p. 43-44), Jerry Coyne (p. 84-87), Stephen Pinker (p. 89-93), and E. O. Wilson (p. 112). Weikart is respectful of his intellectual opponents, while documenting their contradictions with precision and wit.
Ah yes, your link leads to the review of Weikart’s book by a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute. That should lead to some incisive and clear-eyed argument, not to mention hilarity. Like this little gem, “There is, alas, precious little scientific substance to Krauss’s and Dawkins’s opposition to intelligent design and or their arguments for unguided evolution… Dr. Weikart shows how some of the scientific debate over Darwinism and human nature can be traced back to faulty philosophical foundations, and why all this matters for the future of humanity.” Yikes! The future of humanity rests on these (faulty) philosophical foundations.
Those sneaky atheists and their darned faulty thinky-fied foundations! We are such fools for assuming the world will still turn even if we’re so, so wrong about stuff!
But…what specific faulty foundations, foisted upon us by rapscallions Dawkins, Krause, et al, might have been unearthed (pun intended) by Brother Weikart, thus undermining the “theory” of evolution and implicitly supporting the claims of ID/creationism? Given that the future of humanity hangs in the balance, I think it best not to go it alone…
Ooh, godless atheism.
Is there any other kind?
As for where Dawkins and others get their morals from, just one word – fairness – is enough for most of it. And a better foundation than anything the Goddists can claim.
cr
That was, of course, a reply to Stephen.
Drat WP.
cr
Hello all. I just bought both FvF and WEIT for Kindle (maybe I can somehow get Jerry to sign my laptop or something).
Out of curiosity (tempered by a considerable amount of trepidation), I decided to look at what Amazon had deemed the “top critical review” (not categorically dismissive, but “critical” in the truer meaning of the word), as well as the 1-Star reviews.
The 1-Star reviews were a dazzling array of huffing and puffing, ranging from impressively controlled to not-so-impressively-controlled histrionic claims of “unfair!” Basically, they accuse Jerry of using a definition of faith as a straw man simply to bolster his “bias”–i.e., contrary to what Jerry claims, faith isn’t a way to know something, rather it is trust in what jesus (allegedly) said was/is true.
Ummm…please correct me if I am wrong, but the minute one says that “statement x” is TRUE, one has then made a claim that one KNOWS it. The refutation can’t be that easy, so I must be missing something.
The “top critical review” I referred to above seems to merit some discussion–though again I could be wrong. I guess what I am asking for is if folks here would find it acceptable and appropriate to engage in a discussion about the review in question. It was written by Mike S., on 4/20/16 (yeah, 4/20, I didn’t make that up). If this forum is not the appropriate one in which to have this discussion, please email me if you wish, at ccourington@gmail.com. My goal is to sharpen my understanding of the legitimacy and basic tenets of various counterarguments. I know there are many folks here who far better versed in such things than I am, so any time you might spare, even to exchange emails with me, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. (If, by making this request, I have violated any rules of this page, I apologize and will not repeat the error.)
Reblogged this on aspiblog and commented:
If you have not already got a copy of this book take this opportunity to rectify this omission. For more about it see my review here: https://aspiblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/faith-vs-fact-book-review/…
Have just reblogged this with a link to my own review of the book: https://aspiblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/faith-vs-fact-book-review/
Much thanks to thomassutcliffe for providing the links on his response. Overall, it seems that the more argumentative of the flock, regardless of their particular denomination, proceed from a fundamental ***misunderstanding*** of how science “works” and the nature of the results it produces. They vehemently repeated a baseless assertion that science clsims to produce “answers” in a closed epistemic system similar to that of math: 2 + 2 = 4, and there is no experiment or set of circumstances which will make that statement invalid (even if Big Brother–or the Holy Ghost–is involved). This is, of course, utterly false. ***Further, I assume that for many of the more polished practitioners of christian apologetics, the above assertion is a straw man, and a rather ironic one: These same folks accuse Jerry and many others of misrepresenting the concept/act of faith: that it isn’t a truth claim outright, but a choice to accept that the actions and words of their messiah were/are true. Now then, how that ISN’T a truth claim requires a craftiness at self-deception that is exceptionally polished and highly nuanced. Regardless of the misunderstanding or misrepresentation, the result is the same: if such belief isn’t actually a truth claim, then there is no way to directly challenge it with “okay, give me evidence.” The a priori stance of all apologetics–“god exists, so therefore…”–dissolves instantly if faith is seen as a truth claim, which it damn well is. I’m guessing that the majority of these folks do understand the real mechanisms of science and its relationship to knowledge, and that’s precisely why they misrepresent it: the call for valid evidence for god’s existence, as defined by the tenets of scientific inquiry, will never appear. So, if they rig the game as to what suffices as “evidence,” then the entire argument devolves into how we lying atheists/scientists/lazy materialists are just ignoring the abundant evidence for god that is there and always has been there, etc etc. That’s my take on it, anyway. R’amen.
That sounds fine!
Do you have any information, if the book will also be published in Germany in the near future?