There is no evidence at all. Dan Barker, lecture 2001, ‘Losing Faith in Faith’
Evidence is the root of real journalism. John Pilger, lecture 2018
We may define ‘faith’ as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of ‘faith’. We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions. Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics 1954
I see no evidence whatever for any of the Christian dogmas. Renowned Academics Speaking About God, Bertrand Russell
There’s no evidence we need anything other than the laws of physics. ibid. Professor Lawrence Krauss
What is faith? It is belief in the absence of evidence ... Believing when there is no compelling evidence is a mistake. ibid. Professor Carl Sagan
We can look for evidence of it. ibid. Professor Mark Balaguer
You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence; it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe. Carl Sagan
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Carl Sagan
The question arises, Might there have been a visit to the Earth in historical times? ... It’s a kind of modern dress for old-time religion ... You can’t exclude the possibility but there is not a smidgen of evidence that is compelling. Carl Sagan, interview In Search of Ancient Astronauts, 1973
Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan, Cosmos: Heaven and Hell, PBS 1980
It is often said that Christian faith is the dominant faith in America. It is also often said that faith is a bad thing, which prevents religious people from determining the answers to various vital questions. On the basis of the relevant evidence, faith in other words is regarded as not only blind, but blinding. The truth about America however is more complex. Another kind of faith, radically different from Christian faith, is actually the dominant faith in our country. Professor David Ray Griffin, interview Guns & Butter 7th January 2009
Too often Christian faith is less important to Christians in America than their American faith. The evidence that 9/11 was an inside job I have argued is overwhelming to anyone with eyes to see. And Christian faith at its best serves to open people’s eyes to this evidence. When Christian faith is subordinated to faith in American goodness, however, it becomes a blinding faith. Producing Christians with eyes wide shut. In working so long to expose the truth about 9/11 one of my central hopes is that this exposure will lead American Christians to repent of this idolatrous subordination. And once Christians see 9/11 for what it was, in the pretext to extend the American Empire, in predominantly Muslim countries, I hope they will realise that to be loyal to Jesus, I preach an anti-Imperial gospel. They will need to oppose American imperialism as they have opposed previous types of imperialism. Our country needs, our world needs, our leadership in exposing the truth about 9/11. Let’s do it! ibid.
There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry ... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. J Robert Oppenheimer
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. Isaac Asimov
There is an overwhelming body of evidence that says we are warming our planet. But complexity allows for confusion and for alternative theories to develop. The only solution is to look at all the evidence as a whole. I think some extreme sceptics decide what to think first and then cherry-pick the data to support their case. We scientists have to acknowledge we now operate in a world where point of view, not peer review, hold sway. Professor Sir Paul Nurse, president Royal Society, Horizon: Science Under Attack, BBC 2011
Science teaches us what the rules of evidence are. The Challenger 2013 starring William Hurt & Bruce Greenwood & Joanne Whalley & Kevin McNally & Henry Goodman & Eve Best & Brian Dennegy et al, director James Hawes, Feynman lecture
But it’s evidence the astronauts left behind not what they brought back that may finally prove the sceptics wrong. Each mission set up a series of experiments; more than thirty years after the Apollo 11 mission one of them continues to function: the lunar-lazar ranger ... High up in the McDavis Mountain range the McDonald Observatory in Texas still gathers information from those reflectors ... Since 1969 his [chief engineer] team has been firing a laser beam at the experiment on average 240 times a year. The Truth Behind the Moon Landings, Discovery 2003
The Theory of Evolution is no longer a battleground: that’s because the evidence for it so much richer and more varied now than in the days of Darwin and Wallace. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 9/13: Evolution: The Ladder of Creation, BBC 1973
To my way of thinking, there is every bit as much evidence for the existence of UFOs as there is for the existence of God. Probably far more. At least in the case of UFOs there have been countless taped and filmed and, by the way, unexplained sightings from all over the world, along with documented radar evidence seen by experienced military and civilian radar operators. George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
If there were compelling evidence, yes, you would have tens of thousands of academics beavering away, working on it; if the evidence is poor, they are not going to waste their time. Josh Shostak, interview UFOs: Conspiracy Road Trip, BBC 2012
I believe that there is compelling evidence that people are being abducted by aliens. Professor David Jacobs
What evidence lies deep underwater? Ancient Aliens s2e3: Underwater World, History 2010
Evidences of Christianity! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need for it; and you may safely trust it to his own Evidence. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Aids to Reflection, 1825
The burden of proof ... What evidence is there? ... Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Why I am No Longer a Christian
Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all ‘faith’ is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: ‘By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.’ It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. ‘Faith’ is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. ‘Faith’ is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence.
But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence.
And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence.
Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters – methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence – such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods – astronomy, geology and history, for instance – they have not proven terribly reliable ...