3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ’s followers seem to disagree.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organised ignorance.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins I’m not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn’t put too much emphasis on the word ‘just.’ There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence, as opposed to tradition, authority, revelation or faith, they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us – through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology – that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Isn’t it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins At least the fundamentalists haven’t tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins I suppose if you look back to your early childhood you accept everything people tell you, and that includes a heavy dose of irrationality – you’re told about tooth fairies and Father Christmas and things.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that’s because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Science coverage could be improved by the recognition that science is timeless, and therefore science stories should not need to be pegged to an item in the news.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence.
3 December 2020 Richard Dawkins For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.
