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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 6

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Next time that somebody tells you something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?' And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word

Next time that somebody tells you something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?' And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Thinking, Giving
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.248, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

People who believe in God conclude there must have been a divine knob twiddler who twiddled the knobs of these half-dozen constants to get them exactly right. The problem is that this says, because something is vastly improbable, we need a God to explain it. But that God himself would be even more improbable.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, People, Half
Source: inters.org

There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist, and quite good reasons for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.

Richard Dawkins
Believe, Religion, Atheism

Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops.

Richard Dawkins
Death, Religious, Pride
Richard Dawkins (2017). “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist”, p.267, Random House

Not a single one of your ancestors died young. They all copulated at least once.

Richard Dawkins
Atheism, Young, Ancestor

Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?

Richard Dawkins
Spring, Curiosity, World
Richard Dawkins (2000). “Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder”, p.6, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The moral law is a reason to think of God as plausible - not just a God who sets the universe in motion but a God who cares about human beings, because we seem uniquely amongst creatures on the planet to have this far-developed sense of morality.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Law, Who Cares
Source: inters.org

Yesterday's dangerous idea is today's orthodoxy and tomorrow's cliché.

Richard Dawkins
Dangerous Ideas, Yesterday, Today
Source: bobmorris.biz

Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many people are unable to understand that 'X is comforting' does not imply 'X is true'.

Richard Dawkins
People, Comforting, Doe
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

What are all of us but self-reproducing robots? We have been put together by our genes and what we do is roam the world looking for a way to sustain ourselves and ultimately produce another robot child.

Richard Dawkins
Life, Children, Self

I do sometimes accuse people of ignorance, but that is not intended to be an insult. I'm ignorant of lots of things. Ignorance is something that can be remedied by education.

Richard Dawkins
Ignorance, People, Ignorant
"How Richard Dawkins Communicates Evolution (Surprise, It’s Not the Same Thing as Atheism)" by Chris Mooney, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

To an honest judge, the alleged convergence between religion and science is a shallow, empty, hollow, spin-doctored sham.

Richard Dawkins
Judging, Religion, Atheism
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very, very improbable.

Richard Dawkins
Flying, Monsters, Fantasy
"Why There Almost Certainly Is No God" by Richard Dawkins, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 23, 2006.

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.

Richard Dawkins
Meaningful, Atheist, Responsibility
"The God Delusion". Book by Richard Dawkins, October 2, 2006.

We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance.

Richard Dawkins
Chance, Existence, Living Things
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.51, W. W. Norton & Company

If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Believe, Moving
"Viruses of the Mind". Book by Richard Dawkins, 1993.

False beliefs can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment.

Richard Dawkins
Belief, Moments, Consoling
Richard Dawkins (2009). “The God Delusion”, p.398, Random House

We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Religion, Atheism

Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change His future mind?

Richard Dawkins
Omnipotence, Mind, Atheism
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.101, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I can't be sure God does not exist. On a scale of seven, where one means I know he exists, and seven I know he doesn't, I call myself a six. That doesn't mean I'm absolutely confident, that I absolutely know, because I don't.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Doe, Six
"'I Can't Be Sure God Does Not Exist': World's Most Notorious Atheist Richard Dawkins Admits He Is in Fact Agnostic". www.dailymail.co.uk. February 24, 2012.

Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.

Richard Dawkins
Miracle, Facts, Spirit
Source: inters.org

I'd like everybody to be secular. I suppose I have to say politically I would like religion to become gentler and nicer and to stop interfering with other people's lives, stop repressing women, stop indoctrinating children, all that sort of thing. But I really, really would like to see religion go away altogether.

Richard Dawkins
Children, People, Going Away
"Interview: Richard Dawkins Keeps Making New Enemies". Interview with Isaac Chotiner, newrepublic.com. October 29, 2013.

You contain a trillion copies of a large, textual document written in a highly accurate, digital code, each copy as voluminous as a substantial book. I'm talking, of course, of the DNA in your cells.

Richard Dawkins
Book, Dna, Cells
"Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder". Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC1 Television, www.edge.org. November 12, 1996.

Religion shows a pattern of heredity which I think is similar to genetic heredity. ... There are hundreds of different religious sects, and every religious person is loyal to just one of these. ... The overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one their parents belonged to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained-glass, the best music when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing compared to the matter of heredity.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Science, Thinking

The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion gives strong sanction to both-and mixes explosively with both. Only the willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today.

Richard Dawkins
Strong, Two, Giving