Quotes from Richard Dawkins

I define a replicator as anything in the universe of which copies are made.

Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.

Replicators may be classified in two ways. They may be 'active' or 'passive', and, cutting across this classification, they may be 'germ-line' or 'dead-end' replicators.

I, like you, see through all the smoke and mirrors, but come on, guys, think of the poor dears who can't handle the truth!

This is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. It is not intended as an anti-religious book. I have done that, it's another T-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again

Listen to the Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University: 'AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.'121

Einstein said, 'If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Gaps, by default in the mind of the creationist, are filled by God.

To describe the forests of the world as its 'lungs' does no harm, and it might do some good if it encourages people to preserve them. But the rhetoric of holistic harmony can degenerate into a kind of dotty, Prince Charles-style mysticism.

algorithm of natural selection has generated a machine capable of internalizing the algorithm, setting up a model of itself – and much more – in microcosm inside the human skull.

A quasi-mystical response to nature and the universe is common among scientists and rationalists. It has no connection with supernatural belief.

An active replicator is any replicator whose nature has some influence over its probability of being copied. For example a DNA molecule, via protein synthesis, exerts phenotypic effects which influence whether it is copied: this is what natural selection is all about.

A passive replicator is a replicator whose nature has no influence over its probability of being copied.

A further important point is that Maynard Smith was seeking the 'best' strategy in only a special sense. In fact he was seeking an 'evolutionarily stable strategy' or ESS.

Evolution is the process by which some genes become more numerous and others less numerous in the gene pool.

Many people have noted the contrast between the hysterical 'hurt' professed by Muslims and the readiness with which Arab media publish stereotypical anti-Jewish cartoons. At a demonstration in Pakistan against the Danish cartoons, a woman in a black burka was photographed carrying a banner reading 'God Bless Hitler'. In

A germ-line replicator (which may be active or passive) is a replicator that is potentially the ancestor of an indefinitely long line of descendant replicators. A gene in a gamete is a germ-line replicator. So is a gene in one of the germ-line cells of a body, a direct mitotic ancestor of a gamete.

The ESS has been rigorously defined (Maynard Smith 1974), but it can be crudely encapsulated as a strategy that is successful when competing with copies of itself.

most of us believe the welfare state is highly desirable. But you cannot have an unnatural welfare state, unless you also have unnatural birth control; otherwise, the end result will be misery even greater than that which obtains in nature.

Often altruism within a group goes with selfishness between groups. This is a basis of trade unionism.

If a program or strategy is successful, this means that copies of it will tend to become more numerous in the population of programs and will ultimately become almost universal. It will therefore come to be surrounded by copies of itself. If it is to remain universal, therefore, it must be successful when competing against copies of itself, successful compared with rare different strategies that might arise by mutation or invasion.

Nevertheless, it is a common error, which we shall meet again, to leap from the premise that the question of God's existence is in principle unanswerable to the conclusion that his existence and his non-existence are equiprobable.

A dead-end replicator (which also may be active or passive) is a replicator which may be copied a finite number of times, giving rise to a short chain of descendants, but which is definitely not the potential ancestor of an indefinitely long line of descendants.

A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple.