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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 31

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My God is not improbable to me. He has no need of a creation story for himself or to be fine-tuned by something else.

My God is not improbable to me. He has no need of a creation story for himself or to be fine-tuned by something else.

Richard Dawkins
Needs, Stories, Creation
Source: inters.org

God is the answer to all of those "How must it have come to be" questions.

Richard Dawkins
Answers
Source: inters.org

There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.

Richard Dawkins
Understanding
Source: inters.org

Creationists are possibly gaining more political power. In the U.S., you are constantly hearing stories of school boards harassing teachers and trying to get textbooks banned.

Richard Dawkins
Teacher, School, Political
Source: www.macleans.ca

Most people understand that sexual lust has to do with propagating genes. Copulation in nature tends to lead to reproduction and so to more genetic copies. But in modern society, most copulations involve contraception, designed precisely to avoid reproduction. Altruism probably has origins like those of lust.

Richard Dawkins
People, Lust, Modern
Source: inters.org

That was unfortunate. I should have compared religion with religion and compared Islam not with Trinity College but with Jews, because the number of Jews who have won Nobel Prizes is phenomenally high.

Richard Dawkins
College, Should Have, Numbers
Source: newrepublic.com

Good and evil - I don't believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Evil, Hanging Out
Source: inters.org

What Francis [Collins] was just saying about Genesis was, of course, a little private quarrel between him and his Fundamentalist colleagues. It would be unseemly for me to enter in except to suggest that he'd save himself an awful lot of trouble if he just simply ceased to give them the time of day.

Richard Dawkins
Giving, Would Be, Littles
Source: inters.org

There's an element of paradox there - that at least you know where you stand with the fundamentalists. I mean, they're absolutely clear in their error and their stupidity, and so you can really go after them.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Errors, Stupidity
Source: newrepublic.com

I think that's the mother and father of all cop-outs. It's an honest scientific quest to discover where this apparent improbability comes from. Now [Francis] Collins says, "Well, God did it. And God needs no explanation because God is outside all this." Well, what an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain. Scientists don't do that. Scientists say, "We're working on it. We're struggling to understand."

Richard Dawkins
Mother, Father, Struggle
Source: inters.org

They are either people of faith who have lost their faith from reading my books, or they are people who had already lost their faith, and something about my books encouraged them to affirm that.

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

Very close cousins like humans and chimps have almost all their genes in common. Slightly less close cousins like humans and monkeys still have recognizably the same genes. You could carry on right on down to humans and bacteria, and you will find continuous compelling evidence for the hierarchical tree of cousinship.

Richard Dawkins
Cousin, Tree, Monkeys
Source: www.macleans.ca

I'm fond of science fiction. But not all science fiction.

Richard Dawkins
Fiction, Science Fiction
Source: newrepublic.com

I think there could be a very large number who are creationists by default. Those are the people I want to reach.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Numbers, People
Source: www.macleans.ca

Professor Challenger, Conan Doyle's science hero, was a sort of irascible man constantly bellowing at people, so he was a little bit of a departure from both of those stereotypes.

Richard Dawkins
Hero, Men, People
Source: newrepublic.com

If you are asking me if my more global purpose is a battle against religion, it is.

Richard Dawkins
Battle, Purpose, Asking
Source: www.macleans.ca

It is important not to confuse race and religion.

Richard Dawkins
Race, Important, Race And Religion
Source: newrepublic.com

The gravitational constant, if it were off by one part in a hundred million million, then the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang would not have occurred in the fashion that was necessary for life to occur. When you look at that evidence, it is very difficult to adopt the view that this was just chance.

Richard Dawkins
Fashion, Views, Bangs
Source: inters.org

There is a whole field of inquiry that has come up in the last 30 or 40 years - some call it sociobiology or evolutionary psychology - relating to where we get our moral sense and why we value the idea of altruism, and locating both answers in behavioral adaptations for the preservation of our genes.

Richard Dawkins
Ideas, Years, Psychology
Source: inters.org

Granted, we may try to help our own family members because they share our DNA. Or help someone else in expectation that they will help us later. But when you look at what we admire as the most generous manifestations of altruism, they are not based on kin selection or reciprocity. An extreme example might be Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chambers. That's the opposite of saving his genes.

Richard Dawkins
Opposites, Dna, Expectations
Source: inters.org

Creationists and Holocaust deniers are both very similar - both are denying what is a perfectly manifest fact. In the case of Holocaust deniers it's more recent history, but in both cases the evidence - in favour of the Holocaust and evolution - is simply overwhelming. That doesn't mean they are morally or politically equivalent. But they are equivalent in denying history.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Holocaust, Facts
Source: www.macleans.ca

God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of science can provide the answer.

Richard Dawkins
Tools, Calling, Answers
Source: inters.org

There are sincere believers who interpret Genesis 1 and 2 in a very literal way that is inconsistent, frankly, with our knowledge of the universe's age or of how living organisms are related to each other.

Richard Dawkins
Age, Way, Sincere
Source: inters.org

From my perspective, God cannot be completely contained within nature, and therefore God's existence is outside of science's ability to really weigh in.

Richard Dawkins
Perspective, Existence, Ability
Source: inters.org

By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time.

Richard Dawkins
Space, Time And Space
Source: inters.org