Quotes About Richard Dawkins

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.

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.

Dan Dennett reminds us that the common cold is universal to all human peoples in much the same way as religion is, yet we would not want to suggest that colds benefit us.

We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.

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

Many will remember with affection the day Basil Fawlty's car broke down during his vital mission to save Gourmet Night from disaster. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, then got out of the car, seized a tree branch and thrashed it to within an inch of its life.

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. RALPH WALDO EMERSON

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

Polls suggest that approximately 95 per cent of the population of the United States believe they will survive their own death.

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

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

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.

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

To regard an organism as a replicator, even an asexual organism like a female stick insect, is tantamount to a violation of the 'central dogma' of the non-inheritance of acquired characteristics.

I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.

I'm inclined to suspect (with some evidence, although it may be simplistic to draw conclusions from it) that there are very few atheists in prisons. I am not necessarily claiming that atheism increases morality, although humanism – the ethical system that often goes with atheism – probably does.

If all the evidence in the universe turned in favour of creationism, I would be the first to admit it, and I would immediately change my mind. As things stand, however, all available evidence (and there is a vast amount of it) favours evolution. It is for this reason and this reason alone that I argue for evolution with a passion that matches the passion of those who argue against it. My passion is based on evidence. Theirs, flying in the face of evidence as it does, is truly fundamentalist.

Why is God considered an explanation for anything? It's not—it's a failure to explain, a shrug of the shoulders, an 'I dunno' dressed up in spirituality and ritual. If someone credits something to God, generally what it means is that they haven't a clue, so they're attributing it to an unreachable, unknowable sky-fairy