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Richard Dawkins Quotes - Page 9

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Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as

Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water.

Richard Dawkins
Strong, Hands, Water
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.154, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Some sort of belief in all-powerful supernatural beings is common, if not universal. A tendency to obey authority, perhaps especially in children, a tendency to believe what you're told, a tendency to fear your own death, a tendency to wish to see your loved ones who have died, to wish to see them again, a wish to understand where you came from, where the world came from, all these psychological predispositions, under the right cultural conditions, tend to lead to people believing in things for which there is no evidence.

Richard Dawkins
Children, Powerful, Believe
Source: www.abc.net.au

I think I would abolish schools which systematically inculcate sectarian beliefs.

Richard Dawkins
School, Thinking, Belief
"Darwin's child" by Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. February 10, 2003.

...I am not attacking any particular God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, whenever or wherever they have been or will be invented.

Richard Dawkins
Anything And Everything, Attacking, Particular

Natural selection is anything but random.

Richard Dawkins
Natural, Natural Selection, Selection
Richard Dawkins (2017). “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist”, p.204, Random House

When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.

Richard Dawkins
Cells, Brain, Mind
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.213, Oxford University Press

People like to trace their ancestry.

Richard Dawkins
People, Ancestry

All qualified physicists, biologists, cosmologists and geologists agree, on the basis of massive, mutually corroborating evidence, that the earth's age is at least four billion years.

Richard Dawkins
Years, Age, Earth

An Internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea. Instead of mutating by random change and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, Internet memes are altered deliberately by human creativity. There is no attempt at accuracy of copying, as with genes - and as with memes in their original version.

Richard Dawkins
Creativity, Ideas, Hijacking
"The Very Best of Richard Dawkins: Quotes from a Devout Atheist". Book by Gordon Fisher, 2014.

There is an attitude in the culture that says that everybody is entitled to their opinion. You got to respect their opinion. No, you damn well haven't got to respect their opinion.

Richard Dawkins
Attitude, Religion, Culture

Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree.

Richard Dawkins
Followers, And Love, Christ

All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.

Richard Dawkins
Humanity, Survival, Entity
Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.423, Oxford University Press

What is the purpose of the universe?" is a silly question.

Richard Dawkins
Silly, Purpose, Universe
"Religion and Atheism". "Q&A" with Tony Jones, www.abc.net.au. April 9, 2012.

Religious organisations have an automatic tax-free charitable status.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Taxes, Charitable

I have never quite understood - and this is no doubt my failing - I never quite understood why you would read fiction to understand the human condition.

Richard Dawkins
Doubt, Never Quit, Fiction
Source: newrepublic.com

I am passionate about truth and passionate about clarity, and I don't regard myself as particularly militant or aggressive. I simply wish to discuss what is true and to listen to evidence and put evidence forward to other people and have a sensible, sane, moderated argument.

Richard Dawkins
People, Wish, Passionate
Interview with George Negus, www.sbs.com.au. March 7, 2010.

My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a "they" as opposed to a "we" can be identified at all.

Richard Dawkins
Motivation, War, Religion
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.158, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The list of things about which we strictly have to be agnostic doesn't stop at tooth fairies and celestial teapots. It is infinite. If you want to believe in a particular one of them - teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh - the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. 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, Believe, Want

Gould carried the art of bending over backward to positively supine lengths. Why shouldn't we comment on God, as scientists? ... A universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?

Richard Dawkins
Art, Creative, Matter
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.78, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.

Richard Dawkins
Life, Gratitude, Morning

Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born

Richard Dawkins
People, Sahara, Evolution
Unweaving the Rainbow ch. 1 (1998)

I might respect you as a brilliant intellect, runner, musician or juggler. But respect your BELIEFS? Only if they're supported by evidence.

Richard Dawkins
Musician, Might, Belief
Twitter post from Jun 21, 2014

An intelligent couple can read their Darwin and know that the ultimate reason for their sexual urges is procreation. They know that the woman cannot conceive because she is on the pill. Yet they find that their sexual desire is in no way diminished by the knowledge. Sexual desire is sexual desire and its force, in an individual's psychology, is independent of the ultimate Darwinian pressure that drove it. It is a strong urge which exists independently of its ultimate rationale.

Richard Dawkins
Strong, Couple, Independent
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.253, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world, you also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.

Richard Dawkins
Giving, Understanding, Tutorial
"The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment-thereby, incidentally, condemning remote future generations of Jews to pogroms and persecution as 'Christ-killers': did that hereditary sin pass down in the semen too?

Richard Dawkins
Forgiving, Generations, Why Not
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.287, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt