Quotes from Richard Dawkins

The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. THOMAS JEFFERSON

The behaviour of physical, nonbiological objects is so simple that it is feasible to use existing mathematical language to describe it, which is why physics books are full of mathematics.

a group, such as a species or a population within a species, whose individual members are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the group, may be less likely to go extinct than a rival group whose individual members place their own selfish interests first. Therefore the world becomes populated mainly by groups consisting of self-sacrificing individuals. This is the theory of 'group selection'

The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question, even if it is not in practice - or not yet- a decided one. So also is the truth or falsehood of every one of the miracle stories that religions rely upon to impress multitudes of the faithful.

Evolution is within us, around us, between us, and its workings are embedded in the rocks of eons past.

The reason for this double standard in our scepticism is, quite simply, that we can see and we can't echolocate.

my trillions are American, like all my units: one American trillion is a million millions; an American billion is a thousand millions). Our brains are no better equipped to handle extremes of complexity than extremes of size and the other difficult extremes of physics.

A mutant individual who was prepared to go on just a little bit longer would always win. So the strategy of maintaining a fixed bidding limit is unstable.

I asked Watson whether he knew many religious scientists today. He replied: 'Virtually none. Occasionally I meet them, and I'm a bit embarrassed [laughs] because, you know, I can't believe anyone accepts truth by revelation.

It is widely admitted that serious error follows from the uncritical assumption that adaptations are for the good of the species.

Compared with the Old Testament's psychotic delinquent, the deist God of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment is an altogether grander being:

Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain.

tried to impose 'intelligent design' creationism on the science curriculum of a local public school—a move of 'breathtaking inanity', to quote Judge Jones

A more systematic study by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi 'found that among Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences, as well as those in literature, there was a remarkable degree of irreligiosity, as compared to the populations they came from'.51

First cousins, for instance, have two common ancestors, and the generation distance via each one is 4. Therefore their relatedness is

Each individual goes on for an unpredictable time. Unpredictable on any particular occasion, that is, but averaging the true value of the resource

Many people believe in God because they believe they have seen a vision of him – or of an angel or a virgin in blue – with their own eyes. Or he speaks to them inside their heads. This argument from personal experience is the one that is most convincing to those who claim to have had one. But it is the least convincing to anyone else, and anyone knowledgeable about psychology.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from pacifism, we have a pusillanimous reluctance to use religious names for warring factions. In Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants are euphemized to 'Nationalists' and 'Loyalists' respectively.

An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of a tiny minority whose number came up. Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.

The right to be Christian' seems in this case to mean 'the right to poke your nose into other people's private lives.

Ethnic' in this context is yet another euphemism. What we are seeing in Iraq is religious cleansing. The original usage of 'ethnic cleansing' in the former Yugoslavia is also arguably a euphemism for religious cleansing, involving Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians.6 I

And I shall not be concerned at all with other religions such as Buddhism or Confucianism. Indeed, there is something to be said for treating these not as religions at all but as ethical systems or philosophies of life.

Germ-line replicators, then, are units that actually survive or fail to survive, the difference constituting natural selection.

replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.