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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 25

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There's a natural tendency for children to, in some sense, inherit the cultural values of their parents. I'm not against that, that's fine, that's wonderful. What I am against is labelling. Nobody ever labels a child a

There's a natural tendency for children to, in some sense, inherit the cultural values of their parents. I'm not against that, that's fine, that's wonderful. What I am against is labelling. Nobody ever labels a child a cricketer because his father is a cricketer, but they do label a child a Catholic because his parents are Catholic. I think it's more or less unique. Nobody ever labels a child a socialist or a conservative or a liberal because that's what their parents are.

Richard Dawkins
Children, Father, Unique
"Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". "Science Show" with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible.

Richard Dawkins
Odds, Practice, Tasks

Commonsense lets us down, because commonsense evolved in a world where nothing moves very fast, and nothing is very small or very large; the mundane world of the familiar.

Richard Dawkins
Moving, World, Familiar
"Richard Dawkins and God". "Background Briefing" with Kirsten Garrett on ABC Radio National, www.abc.net.au. November 26, 2006.

I read novels for entertainment rather than for edification, so I tend not to read the sort of novels that are said to illuminate the human condition.

Richard Dawkins
Entertainment, Edification, Said
Source: newrepublic.com

I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat. Cranks and fundamentalists are too often victimised as scapegoats for religion in general. It is only quite recently that Christianity reinvented itself in non-fundamentalist guise, and Islam has yet to do so.

Richard Dawkins
Business, Believe, Deep Understanding

I think we don't do a service to dialogue between science and faith to characterize sincere people by calling them names. That inspires an even more dug-in position.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Names, People
Source: inters.org

I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden

Richard Dawkins
Garden, Agnostic, Fairy
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.74, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There is a tendency for people to say evolution is only a theory. That is inappropriate.

Richard Dawkins
People, Evolution, Inappropriate
Source: www.macleans.ca

Ideally, I'd like everybody to be secular.

Richard Dawkins
Secular
Source: newrepublic.com

[Jay] Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life.

Richard Dawkins
Wall, Two, Jay Gould
Source: inters.org

You can't statistically explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have been designed because you're still left to explain the designer, who must be, if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing.

Richard Dawkins
Designer, Stills, Creatures

Francis [Collins] keeps saying things like "From the perspective of a believer." Once you buy into the position of faith, then suddenly you find yourself losing all of your natural skepticism and your scientific - really scientific - credibility. I'm sorry to be so blunt.

Richard Dawkins
Sorry, Perspective, Finding Yourself
Source: inters.org

Barring a theoretical resolution, which I think is unlikely, you either have to say there are zillions of parallel universes out there that we can't observe at present or you have to say there was a plan. I actually find the argument of the existence of a God who did the planning more compelling than the bubbling of all these multiverses.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Planning, Argument
Source: inters.org

My passion is for scientific truth. I don't much care about good and evil. ... I care about what's true.

Richard Dawkins
Passion, Evil, Care

I need to learn not to bend over backwards to be nice to faith-heads. Give these people an inch and they take a league. I think, as I did when I wrote The God Delusion, that the Roman Catholic Church is a disgusting institution, the second most evil religion in the world.

Richard Dawkins
Nice, Thinking, People
"Divine dispatches: a religion roundup" Riazat Butt, www.theguardian.com. April 28, 2011.

Along with William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin is Britain's greatest gift to the world. He was our greatest thinker.

Richard Dawkins
World, Evolution, Newton

There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent.

Richard Dawkins
Reason, Consideration, Existence
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.77, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I do object to the assumption that anything that might be outside of nature is ruled out of the conversation. That's an impoverished view of the kinds of questions we humans can ask, such as "Why am I here?", "What happens after we die?", "Is there a God?" If you refuse to acknowledge their appropriateness, you end up with a zero probability of God after examining the natural world because it doesn't convince you on a proof basis.

Richard Dawkins
Zero, Views, World
Source: inters.org

I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.

Richard Dawkins
Oppression, Revulsion, Visceral
"Fury Over Richard Dawkins's Burka Jibe as Atheist Tells of His 'visceral Revulsion' at Muslim Dress". www.dailymail.co.uk. August 10, 2010.

Religion is the most inflammatory enemy-labelling device in history.

Richard Dawkins
Enemy, Devices
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.159, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

If it's really true, that the museum at Liberty University has dinosaur fossils which are labelled as being 3000 years old, then that is an educational disgrace. It is debauching the whole idea of a university, and I would strongly encourage any members of Liberty University who may be here to leave and go to a proper university.

Richard Dawkins
Educational, Museums, Years
"Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science". Book by Richard Dawkins, 2015.

I've always been antagonistic to any naïve application of the selfish gene theory to politics. Some people have attempted to suggest that it means we are selfish or we should be selfish.

Richard Dawkins
Selfish, Mean, People
Source: newrepublic.com

The fact that somebody does good doesn't make their beliefs true.

Richard Dawkins
Doe, Facts, Belief
"Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". Interview with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

I guess there are some rights of parents with what they choose their children to learn, but I'm biased in favor of freeing children to learn and not letting parents be too doctrinaire in indoctrinating their children.

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

Faith is the lack of evidence, and it shouldn't be that difficult to convince people that the right reason to believe something is that there is evidence for it. People do not innately go for this view, but nevertheless it is not that difficult to teach.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Views, People
Source: newrepublic.com