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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 22

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It's known that stress gives rise to disease. It's also known that many diseases, especially stress-related diseases, can be cured by placebos - pills that have no medicinal effect, but people think they do, and so they

It's known that stress gives rise to disease. It's also known that many diseases, especially stress-related diseases, can be cured by placebos - pills that have no medicinal effect, but people think they do, and so they do.

Richard Dawkins
Stress, Thinking, People
Faith and Reason - PBS, www.pbs.org.

Faith is not the opposite of reason.

Richard Dawkins
Opposites, Reason
Source: inters.org

Evolution may explain some features of the moral law, but it can't explain why it should have any real significance.

Richard Dawkins
Real, Should Have, Law
Source: inters.org

What you cannot have is a gene that sacrifices itself for the benefit of other genes. What you can have is a gene that makes organisms sacrifice themselves for other organisms under the influence of selfish genes.

Richard Dawkins
Selfish, Sacrifice, Benefits
Faith and Reason - PBS, www.pbs.org.

Quantum mechanics, that brilliantly successful flagship theory of modern science, is deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Eastern mystics have always been deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Therefore, Eastern mystics must have been talking about quantum theory all along.

Richard Dawkins
Successful, Talking, Mysterious
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.147, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

If we say that religion is a virus, then why isn't science a virus?

Richard Dawkins
Viruses, Ifs
PBS Interview, www.pbs.org.

Science is wonderful, science is important, and so are children, so are young people, and so what could be better than to write a science book for young people?

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

Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite ... If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sum right.

Richard Dawkins
Hypocrite, Feet, Flying
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain.

Richard Dawkins
Trying, Worthwhile, Hypothesis

I think by the age of about nine I recognized that there were a lot of different religions, and it was an accident I happened to be born into one of them. If I had been born somewhere else, I would have had a different one. Which is a pretty good lesson, actually. Everyone should learn that.

Richard Dawkins
Wisdom, Thinking, Somewhere Else
"Interview: Richard Dawkins Keeps Making New Enemies". Interview with Isaac Chotiner, newrepublic.com. October 29, 2013.

The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to save the creation theory is to assume that God deliberately planted enormous quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened.

Richard Dawkins
Enormous Quantities, Looks, Way

The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.

Richard Dawkins
Real, Islamic, Ideas
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.159, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There are people in the world who desperately want not to have to believe in Darwinism .

Richard Dawkins
Believe, People, World
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.240, W. W. Norton & Company

If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, People, Interesting

Of course, we would love to know more about the exact moment of Big Bang, but interposing an outside intelligence does nothing to add to that knowledge, as we still know nothing about the creation of that intelligence.

Richard Dawkins
Bangs, Doe, Add

The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.

Richard Dawkins
Space, Islands, Religion

The argument from improbability, properly deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist.

Richard Dawkins
Doe, Argument, Prove
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.137, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant with of their review. But in criticisms of religion even clarity ceases to be a virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a 'rant'.

Richard Dawkins
Book, House, Criticism
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Thinking, Self
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.405, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a Marxist child or an Anarchist child or a Post-modernist child. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. We need to encourage people to think carefully before labelling any child too young to know their own opinions and our adverts will help to do that.

Richard Dawkins
Children, Thinking, People

I do disapprove very strongly of labelling children, especially young children, as something like 'Catholic children' or 'Protestant children' or 'Islamic children.'

Richard Dawkins
Children, Islamic, Catholic

If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Distance, Aliens
Richard Dawkins‏ @RichardDawkins, twitter.com. February 17, 2014.

Atheists sometimes come across as a bit arrogant in this regard, and characterizing faith as something only an idiot would attach themselves to.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Arrogant, Idiot
Source: inters.org

I think the probability of a supernatural creator existing is very very low.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Lows, Probability
"'Outspoken atheist' Dawkins admits he is agnostic" by Tim Edwards, www.theweek.co.uk. February 24, 2012.

If saying that religion should be a private matter and should not have special influence in public life is illiberal, then 74% of U.K. Christians are illiberal, too.

Richard Dawkins
Christian, Special, Matter
"What is the proper place for religion in Britain's public life?" by Will Hutton and Richard Dawkins, www.theguardian.com. February 18, 2012.