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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 8

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A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right.

A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right.

Richard Dawkins
Design, Religion, Atheism
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Stress, Views
"Going the whole hog". www.timeshighereducation.com. April 28, 1995.

I am very hostile to religion because it is enormously dominant, especially in American life. And I don't buy the argument that, well, it's harmless. I think it is harmful, partly because I care passionately about what's true.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Religion, Atheism

Some people find clarity threatening. They like muddle, confusion, obscurity. So when somebody does no more than speak clearly it sounds threatening.

Richard Dawkins
People, Confusion, Sound
"Richard Dawkins' Hate Mail". Interview with Rowan Hooper, www.slate.com. December 28, 2013.

A delusion that encourages belief where there is no evidence is asking for trouble. Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle. Instead, disagreements are settled by other means which, in extreme cases, inevitably become violent. Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.

Richard Dawkins
Mean, Fighting, Religion
"The atheist". Interview with Gordy Slack, www.salon.com. May 1, 2005.

The only watchmaker is the blind forces of physics.

Richard Dawkins
Physics, Blind, Force

My last vestige of 'hands off religion' respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11, 2001, followed by the 'National Day of Prayer,' when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.

Richard Dawkins
Kings, Prayer, Dust
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.157, HMH

When I am dying, I should like my life taken out under general anaesthetic, exactly as if it were a diseased appendix.

Richard Dawkins
Taken, Dying, Should
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.400, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place.

Richard Dawkins
Children, Catholic, Abuse

The Roman Catholic Church is an institution for whose gains the phrase "ill-gotten" might have been specially invented. And of all its money-making rip-offs, the selling of indulgences must surely rank among the greatest con tricks in history, the medieval equivalent of the Nigerian Internet scam but far more successful.

Richard Dawkins
Rip, Successful, Catholic

I personally would consider it to be an honour to be fossilized.

Richard Dawkins
Honour

Why did God make tigers so good at catching prey, and at the same time make prey so good at getting away from tigers? You'd think that if God wanted one thing or the other to happen he'd have engineered it rather better. Maybe he enjoyed the spectator sport?

Richard Dawkins
Sports, Thinking, Prey

Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Religion, Atheism
Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.18, W. W. Norton & Company

Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.

Richard Dawkins
Father, Reality, Suffering
"Science saves". www.theguardian.com. December 30, 2004.

Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil.

Richard Dawkins
Evil, Political, Violence
"The Atheist". Interview with Gordy Slack, www.salon.com. April 30, 2005.

I do not believe there is an atheist in the world who would bulldoze Mecca-or Chartres, York Minster or Notre Dame, the Shwe Dagon, the temples of Kyoto or, of course, the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Believe, Kyoto

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, distinctly heard the voice of Jesus telling him to kill women, and he was locked up for life. George W. Bush says that God told him to invade Iraq (a pity God didn't vouchsafe him a revelation that there were no weapons of mass destruction).

Richard Dawkins
Jesus, Mass Destruction, Voice
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable.

Richard Dawkins
Awe And Wonder, Giving, Feelings
Richard Dawkins (2000). “Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder”, p.10, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Understanding, Religion
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The body is a survival machine programmed to propagate the genes that reside inside it.

Richard Dawkins
Survival, Machines, Body

I've been reading an Alabama newspaper that one man shot another man because he beat him in a Bible-quoting competition.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Reading, Men

In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it's got the wrong answers.

Richard Dawkins
Thinking, Wrong Answers, Asking
"Dawkins and the missionary position". Interview with John Preston, www.theage.com.au. December 23, 2006.

The solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle.

Richard Dawkins
Beautiful, Turns, Solutions
Richard Dawkins (2000). “Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder”, p.41, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There's no point of having faith if you have evidence.

Richard Dawkins
Faith, Belief, Evidence

My love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned.

Richard Dawkins
Country, Honesty, Islam
Source: www.slate.com