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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 10

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Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God -- imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor,

Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God -- imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant -- and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave?

Richard Dawkins
Art, Brother, Father

I detest 'Jingle Bells,' 'White Christmas,' 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,' and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too.

Richard Dawkins
Christmas, White, Jingles

[Alternative medicine is defined as] that set of practices that cannot be tested, refuse to be tested or consistently fail tests.

Richard Dawkins
Medicine, Practice, Alternatives
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.180, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

You don't believe that the Earth is round only if you're an astronaut. You don't believe Napoleon existed only if you're a historian. You believe these things because they're facts, proved by evidence.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Earth, Facts

There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.

Richard Dawkins
Real, World, God Delusion
"The Enemies of Reason". Documentary, 2007.

To describe religions as mind viruses is sometimes interpreted as contemptuous or even hostile. It is both. I am often asked why I am so hostile to organized religion.

Richard Dawkins
Mind, Atheism, Viruses
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.117, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The fear of Hell is a very powerful motivation.

Richard Dawkins
Motivation, Powerful, Hell

If you're an atheist, you know, you believe, this is the only life you're going to get. It's a precious life. It's a beautiful life. Its something we should live to the full, to the end of our days. Where if you're religious and you believe in another life somehow, that means you don't live this life to the full because you think you're going to get another one. That's an awfully negative way to live a life. Being a atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily and fully

Richard Dawkins
Beautiful, Religious, Atheist

Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

Richard Dawkins
Selfish, Vanity, Goal
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.58, W. W. Norton & Company

For centuries the most powerful argument for God's existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design: Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer. But [Charles] Darwin provided a simpler explanation. His way is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection.

Richard Dawkins
Beautiful, Powerful, Intelligent
Source: inters.org

Some physicists solve that problem of the necessity of finely tuned physical constants ... by invoking the anthropic principle, saying, well, here we are, we exist, we have to be in the kind of universe capable of giving rise to us. That in itself is, I think, unsatisfying, and as John Lennox rightly says, some physicists solve that by the multiverse idea-the idea that our universe is just one of many universes.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Ideas, Giving

You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.

Richard Dawkins
Strong, Believe, Religion

Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private 'revelation'.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Book, People

Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself.

Richard Dawkins
Needs, Might, Helping
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.244, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.

Richard Dawkins
Lucky, Sahara, Evolution
Unweaving the Rainbow ch. 1 (1998)

What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Make You Think, Religion

Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world.

Richard Dawkins
Objective Truth, World, Materials

I am not absolutely positive there is no god. Only in the sense that I'm not absolutely positive there is no large china teapot in orbit in the solar system.

Richard Dawkins
Orbit, China, Teapots

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

Richard Dawkins
Respect, Atheist, Learning
Speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, April 15, 1992.

Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.

Richard Dawkins
Cute, Humility, Winning

It is time to stop the mealy-mouthed euphemisms: 'Nationalists', 'Loyalists', 'Communities', 'Ethnic Groups', 'Cultures', 'Civilizations'. Religions is the word you need. Religions is the word you are struggling hypocritially to avoid.

Richard Dawkins
Struggle, Civilization, Community

There are very interesting controversies within evolution; however, whether evolution occurs is not one of them. It definitely does.

Richard Dawkins
Interesting, Doe, Evolution
"The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy" with John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley, www.lightspeedmagazine.com. December 2011.

[Creationists have] lost in the courts of law; they've long ago lost in the halls of science; and they continue to lose with every new piece of evidence in support of evolution. Taking offense is all they've got left.

Richard Dawkins
Long Ago, Law, Support

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. Mindless may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion.

Richard Dawkins
New York, People, Leader

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Atheist, If There Is A God
"The Root of All Evil?". Documentary, January 2006.