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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 30

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It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as

It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine.

Richard Dawkins
Crazy, Smell, Mad
"Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1 Television, 1996.

We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.

Richard Dawkins
Memories, Science, Names
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.249, Oxford University Press

I'm a cultural Christian in the same way many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims.

Richard Dawkins
Christian, Way, Jew
"Atheist Dawkins Calls Himself a 'Cultural Christian'" by Lawrence D. Jones, www.christianpost.com. December 11, 2007.

I think we have got to start again and go right back to first principles. The argument I shall advance, surprising as it may seem coming from the author of the earlier chapters, is that, for an understanding of the evolution of modern man, we must begin by throwing out the gene as the sole basis of our ideas on evolution. If there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is He playing at? Is he a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports? ... Is he manuvering to maximize David Attenborough's television ratings?

Richard Dawkins
Sports, Men, Thinking
Richard Dawkins (2006). “The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition”, p.191, OUP Oxford

As my colleague, the physical chemist Peter Atkins, puts it, we must be equally agnostic about the theory that there is a teapot in orbrit around the planet Pluto. We can't disprove it. But that doesn't mean the theory that there is a teapot is on level terms with the theory that there isn't.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Pluto, Levels

It is universally accepted that an admission of atheism would be instant political suicide for any (U.S.) presidential candidate.

Richard Dawkins
Suicide, Presidential, Political
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.67, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I suspect the reason is that most people [...] have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

Richard Dawkins
Simple, People, Feelings

We think we know that chimpanzees are higher animals and earthworms are lower, we think we've always known what that means, and we think evolution makes it even clearer. But it doesn't. It is by no means clear that it means anything at all. Or if it means anything, it means so many different things to be misleading, even pernicious.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Animal, Thinking
Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

I do think imagination is enormously valuable, and that children should be encouraged in their imagination. That's very true.

Richard Dawkins
Children, Thinking, Imagination

If circumcision has any justification AT ALL, it should be medical only. Parents' religion is the worst of all reasons - pure child abuse.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Children, Parent
Twitter post from Nov 19, 2013

What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, not warm breath, not a 'spark of life.' It is information, words, instructions... If you want to understand life, don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology.

Richard Dawkins
Lying, Heart, Technology
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.115, W. W. Norton & Company

Our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but ... it is a mystery no longer because it is solved. Darwin and Wallace solved it ... I was surprised that so many people seemed not only unaware of the elegant and beautiful solution to this deepest of problems but, incredibly, in many cases actually unaware that there was a problem in the first place!

Richard Dawkins
Beautiful, Science, People
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.7, W. W. Norton & Company

There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.

Richard Dawkins
Trying, Want, Imagine
"Darwin’s Dangerous Disciple". Interview with Frank Miele, www.skeptic.com. 1995.

Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?

Richard Dawkins
Children, Fire, Abuse

The odd thing about tradition is, the longer it's been going, the more people seem to take it seriously - as though sheer passage of time makes something which to begin with was just made up, turns it into what people believe as a fact.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, People, Odd Things

If Bush and Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.

Richard Dawkins
War, Trials, Crime
"Executing Saddam Hussein was an Act of Vandalism". www.huffingtonpost.com. January 03, 2007.

I can remember at the age of about six being fascinated by the planets and learning all about Mars and Venus and things.

Richard Dawkins
Age, Mars, Venus
Interview with Paul Hoffman, bigthink.com. October 21, 2009.

Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation.

Richard Dawkins
Reason, Revelations, Components
Source: inters.org

The so-called sophisticated theologians, especially ones who are very nice, like Rowan Williams and Jonathan Sacks, you sometimes don't quite know where you are with them. You feel that when you attack them, you're attacking a wet sponge.

Richard Dawkins
Nice, Sometimes, Sophisticated
Source: newrepublic.com

The recurrent laryngeal nerve - which runs from the head to the voice box - goes all the way down into the chest, loops around a major artery, then goes all the way back up again. It goes right past the larynx on the way down. All a decent designer would have to do is loop it off at that point. What we're looking at is the legacy of history.

Richard Dawkins
Running, Past, Voice
Source: www.macleans.ca

I don't see that [Richard] Dawkins' basic account of evolution is incompatible with God's having designed it.

Richard Dawkins
Evolution, Accounts
Source: inters.org

Do humans have a different moral significance than cows in general?

Richard Dawkins
Different, Cows, Moral
Source: inters.org

What I can't understand is why you invoke improbability and yet you will not admit that you're shooting yourself in the foot by postulating something just as improbable, magicking into existence the word God.

Richard Dawkins
Feet, Shooting, Existence
Source: inters.org

What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up.

Richard Dawkins
Ideas, People, Historical
Source: inters.org

St. Augustine wrote that basically it is not possible to understand what was being described in Genesis. It was not intended as a science textbook. It was intended as a description of who God was, who we are and what our relationship is supposed to be with God.

Richard Dawkins
Textbooks, Who We Are, Augustine
Source: inters.org