Famous Quotes By Richard Dawkins

 

1. A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.
2. At least the fundamentalists haven't tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.
3. 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.
4. By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
5. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
6. 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.
7. Evolution never looks to the future.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.
11. I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
12. 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.
13. I love romantic poetry.
14. 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.
15. I was confirmed at my prep school at the age of 13.
16. 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.
17. I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.
18. Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence.
19. 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?
20. It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.
21. It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have.
22. 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.
23. Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree.
24. Of course in science there are things that are open to doubt and things need to be discussed. But among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know.
25. One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.
26. Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.
27. Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.
28. 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.
29. Segregation has no place in the education system.
30. 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.
31. The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America.
32. The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
33. 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.
34. 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.
35. 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?
36. We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
37. 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.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.