Quotes from Richard Dawkins

An 'idea-meme' might be defined as an entity that is capable of being transmitted from one brain to another.

Ä°ÅŸte bu gerçek, yani ak?ll? tasar?m?n kendisine ait bir kan?t?n?n olmamas? ve kendi kan?t? yerine bilimsel bilginin b?rakt??? boÅŸluklarda bir yabani ot gibi geliÅŸmesi, bilim bir boÅŸluk bulduÄŸunda bunun araÅŸt?r?lmas? için çaÄŸr? yapma ihtiyac? aç?s?ndan s?k?nt? yaratan bir ÅŸeydir.

With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.' Blaise Pascal (he of the wager) said something similar: 'Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Earlier than about 10,000 years ago, all human populations were hunter gatherers. Soon, probably none will be. Those not extinct will be 'civilised' — or corrupted, depending on your point of view.

EÄŸer bilim tarihi bize tek bir ÅŸey gösteriyorsa, o da cehaletimize 'Tanr?' etiketini yap??t?rarak bir yere ulaÅŸamad???m?zd?r.

Faith cannot move mountains (though generations of children are solemnly told the contrary and believe it). But it is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness. It leads people to believe in whatever it is so strongly that in extreme cases they are prepared to kill and to die for it without the need for further justification.

Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Christopher Hitchens

I have yet to see any good reason to suppose that theology (as opposed to biblical history, literature, etc.) is a subject at all.

Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings. Not all animals work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their surrounding temperature, but all animals do some comparable work.

When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn't happen with holy books.

It is the joy of true education: of reading for the sake of a wonderful book rather than for an exam; of following up a subject because it is fascinating rather than because it is on a syllabus; of watching a great teacher's eyes light up for sheer love of the subject.

J. Anderson Thomson, bir evrimsel psikiyatristin bak?? aç?s?yla bunun için bana baÅŸka bir sebep gösterir: Hepimizin sahip olduÄŸu, cans?z nesneleri sanki birer ajanlarm?? gibi kiÅŸiselleÅŸtirmeye olan psikolojik eÄŸilimimiz. Thomson'un söylediÄŸi üzere, bir gölgeyi h?rs?z sanmaya, bir h?rs?z? gölge sanmaktan daha yatk?n?zd?r.

Desmond Morris informs me that John Lennon's magnificent song is sometimes performed in America with the phrase 'and no religion too' expurgated. One version even has the effrontery to change it to 'and one religion too'.

More generally, if living things didn't work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.

Even while the group is going slowly and inexorably downhill, selfish individuals prosper in the short term at the expense of altruists.

This talk of laughing all the way to the bank reminds me of a delightful line from Shakespeare: The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. 2 Henry VI

The Blind Watchmaker, by the same producer, gave me a new respect for his profession. At their best, Horizon producers (some of their programmes can be seen in America, often repackaged under the name Nova)

Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable.

Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows—but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe . . . no, that's holy? . . . We

Single-step selection is just another way of saying pure chance. This is what I mean by nonrandom survival improperly understood. Cumulative selection, by slow and gradual degrees, is the explanation, the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed, for the existence of life's complex design.

Karl Marx, who famously stated in the 1840s: Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Arta reprezentationala de toate tipurile (si, probabil, arta non-reprezentationala de asemenea) depinde de observatia ca un lucru poate tine locul altuia si ca aceasta substitutie poate fi utila pentru gandire sau comunicare.

Sex really is binary. No question about it. You're either male or female, and it's absolutely clear. You can do it on gamete size, you can do it on chromosomes. To me as a biologist, it's distinctly weird that people can simply declare I am a woman, though I have a penis.

To many Native American tribes the Grand Canyon is a sacred place: site of numerous origin myths from the Havasupai to the Zuni; hushed repose of the Hopi dead. If I were forced to choose a religion, that's the kind of religion I could go for. The Grand Canyon confers stature on a religion, outclassing the petty smallness of the Abrahamics, the three squabbling cults which, through historical accident, still afflict the world.