Quotes About Quote

Areas where there is a lack of data, or a lack of understanding, are automatically assumed to belong, by default, to God.

we have all been guilty of bending over backwards to be nice to an unworthy but powerful opponent

My purpose is to examine the biology of selfishness and altruism.

Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.

and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it. No real fundamentalist would ever say anything like that.

When challenged by a zealous Popperian to say how evolution could ever be falsified, J. B. S. Haldane famously growled: 'Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.

Admittedly Turing was not buried alive under a wall pushed over by a tank. He was offered a choice between two years in prison (you can imagine how the other prisoners would have treated him) and a course of hormone injections which could be said to amount to chemical castration, and would have caused him to grow breasts. His final, private choice was an apple that he had injected with cyanide.

Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense.

Bertrand Russell was asked what he would say if he died and found himself confronted by God, demanding to know why Russell had not believed in him. 'Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence,' was Russell's (I almost said immortal) reply.

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

Os braços eternos oferecem uma proteção contra as nossas próprias deficiências, a qual, como o placebo do médico, não é menos eficiente por ser imaginária

The teachings of 'moderate' religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism.

Only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate such utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people.

H. L. Mencken was prophetic when he wrote: 'Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.

atheists and agnostics are not organized and therefore exert almost zero influence. Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

The notion that religion is a proper field, in which one might claim expertise, is one that should not go unquestioned.

Professor Einstein, every Christian in America will immediately reply to you, 'Take your crazy, fallacious theory of evolution and go back to Germany where you came from, or stop trying to break down the faith of a people who gave you a welcome when you were forced to flee your native land.'   The

to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy'.

Active replicators have some effect on the world, which influences their chances of surviving.

God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can't change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent.

If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can't change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent

megachurch televangelists with their mansions and Lear jets, preaching a 'Jesus wants you to be rich' gospel of self-interest

science cannot even make probability judgements on

There is the particular additional benefit of conspicuous generosity as a way of buying unfakeably authentic advertising.