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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 12

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What really happens is that the gene pool becomes filled with genes that influence bodies in such a way that they behave 'as if' they made complex, if unconscious, cost/benefit calculations

What really happens is that the gene pool becomes filled with genes that influence bodies in such a way that they behave 'as if' they made complex, if unconscious, cost/benefit calculations

Richard Dawkins
Cost, Benefits, Body

I personally would go further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare.

Richard Dawkins
Baby, Children, Pregnancy

It's a flaw in our argument, for sure. By any reading of evolutionary theory, creationists ought to have died out ages ago. They serve no function in the planet's ecosystem, and no other species has survived so long while in such fundamental disagreement with observable reality. If I wasn't such an ardent believer in secular materialism, I'd wager this is really troubling Darwin in the afterlife.

Richard Dawkins
Reading, Reality, Ecosystems

If complex organisms demand an explanation, so does a complex designer. And it's no solution to raise the theologian's plea that God (or the Intelligent Designer) is simply immune to the normal demands of scientific explanation. To do so would be to shoot yourself in the foot. You cannot have it both ways. Either ID belongs in the science classroom, in which case it must submit to the discipline required of a scientific hypothesis. Or it does not, in which case, get it out of the science classroom and send it back to church, where it belongs.

Richard Dawkins
Intelligent, Feet, Discipline
"One side can be wrong" by Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, www.theguardian.com. September 01, 2005.

The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it.

Richard Dawkins
Children, Purpose, Assignments
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.210, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I think a fundamentalist is somebody who believes something unshakably and isn't going to change their mind.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Thinking, Mind

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Richard Dawkins
Simple, Blind Belief, Curiosity
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.219, Oxford University Press

Without gradualness...we are back to a miracle.

Richard Dawkins
Miracle

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

Richard Dawkins
Prejudice, Evidence

It is a simple logic truth that, short of mass emigration into space, with rockets taking off at the rate of several million per second, uncontrolled birth-rates are bound to lead to horribly increased death –rates. It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods. They express a preference for ‘natural’ methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Simple, Birth Rate

THE MAJORITY of children born into the world tend to inherit the beliefs of their parents, and that to me is one of the most regrettable facts of them all

Richard Dawkins
Children, Parent, Religion

bad things, like good things don't happen any more often than they ought to by chance. the universe has no mind, no feelings, and no personality, so it doesn't do things in order to either hurt or please you. bad things happen because things happen.

Richard Dawkins
Hurt, Order, Personality
Richard Dawkins (2012). “The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True”, p.226, Simon and Schuster

When I sign books, I get lines of people and what they usually say is: "Thank you. You have changed my life." I am really moved by that.

Richard Dawkins
Book, People, Lines
Source: newrepublic.com

Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.

Richard Dawkins
Order, Flying, Tests
Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries, we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life.

Richard Dawkins
Sleep, Eye, Color
Richard Dawkins (2006). “Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder”, p.21, Penguin UK

Religion and science have nothing to do with each other, they're about different things, science is about the way the world works and religion is about [...] miracles. [...] And in any case, if you ask most ordinary people in church or in a mosque why they believe, it's almost certainly got something to do with the belief that God does wonderful things, that God intervenes, that God heals the sick, that God answers prayers, God forgives sins.

Richard Dawkins
Prayer, Believe, Mean
"Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". Interview with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.

Richard Dawkins
Rivals, Favors, Justified

Saddam Hussein's mind would have been a unique resource for historical, political and psychological research: a resource that is now forever unavailable to scholars... In a small way his execution represents a wanton and vandalistic destruction of important research data.

Richard Dawkins
Unique, Data, Forever

People really, really hate their religion being criticized. It's as though you've said they had an ugly face; they seem to identify personally with it.

Richard Dawkins
Hate, People, Ugly
"Richard Dawkins’ Hate Mail". Interview with Rowan Hooper, www.slate.com. December 28, 2013.

Over the centuries, we've moved on from Scripture to accumulate precepts of ethical, legal and moral philosophy. We've evolved a liberal consensus of what we regard as underpinnings of decent society, such as the idea that we don't approve of slavery or discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, that we respect free speech and the rights of the individual. All of these things that have become second nature to our morals today owe very little to religion, and mostly have been won in opposition to the teeth of religion.

Richard Dawkins
Sex, Philosophy, Rights

So Occam's razor - Occam says you should choose the explanation that is most simple and straightforward - leads me more to believe in God than in the multiverse, which seems quite a stretch of the imagination.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Simple, Imagination
Source: inters.org

Evolution is a theory in a special philosophical sense of science, but in terms of ordinary laymen's use of language, it's a fact, .. Evolution is a fact in the same sense that it's a fact that the Earth is round and not flat, [that] the Earth goes round the Sun. Both those are also theories, but they're theories that have never been disproved and never will be disproved.

Richard Dawkins
Philosophical, Special, Sun

The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun.

Richard Dawkins
Lucky, Sun, Chance
"Richard Dawkins: Beyond belief". Interview with John Crace, www.theguardian.com. January 10, 2006.

To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.

Richard Dawkins
Gun, Atheism, Littering
Richard Dawkins (2017). “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist”, p.183, Random House

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

Richard Dawkins
Religion, Survival, Culture
Richard Dawkins (1989). “The Selfish Gene”, p.193, Oxford University Press, USA