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We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Atheist, If There Is A God
"The Root of All Evil?". Documentary, January 2006.

Why would an all-powerful creator decide to plant his carefully crafted species on islands and continents in exactly the appropriate pattern to suggest, irresistibly, that they had evolved and dispersed from the site of their evolution?

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Powerful, Islands
Richard Dawkins (2009). “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, p.270, Simon and Schuster

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Cat, Thinking
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The God of the Old testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.

Richard Dawkins
God, Religious, Atheist
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think that the Universe began after the domestication of the dog?

Richard Dawkins
Dog, Atheist, Thinking

A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Simple, People
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.184, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is a remarkable coincidence that almost everyone has the same religion as their parents and it always just so happens they're the right religion.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Parent, Religion

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority. But a good first step would be to build up a critical mass of those willing to 'come out,' thereby encouraging others to do so. Even if they can't be herded, cats in sufficient numbers can make a lot of noise and they cannot be ignored.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Cat, Thinking
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god - from Ra to Shiva - in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Believe, Religion

Evil…doesn’t mean doing things that have bad consequences for people. It means private thoughts and actions that are not to “the Christian majority’s” private liking.

Richard Dawkins
Christian, Atheist, Mean
Richard Dawkins (2009). “The God Delusion”, p.328, Random House

Atheists are the new gays; in the closet and pretty much disqualified from public office.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Gay, Office

In two senses: One is that you cannot go on the street and shout that you are an atheist, the other is that you are never given the intellectual framework for calling your faith into question.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Two, Intellectual
Source: newrepublic.com

So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Father, Science
Speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, April 15, 1992.

I believe that an orderly universe, one indifferent to human preoccupations, in which everything has an explanation even if we still have a long way to go before we find it, is a more beautiful, more wonderful place than a universe tricked out with capricious ad hoc magic.

Richard Dawkins
Beautiful, Atheist, Believe
Richard Dawkins (2000). “Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder”, p.11, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Are science and religion converging? No. There are modern scientists whose words sound religious but whose beliefs, on close examination, turn out to be identical to those of other scientists who straightforwardly call themselves atheists.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Atheist, Atheism
Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.146, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

…the Genesis story is just one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, African Tribes, Special
Richard Dawkins (1991). “The blind watchmaker”

The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Thinking, Self
Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.405, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Atheists sometimes come across as a bit arrogant in this regard, and characterizing faith as something only an idiot would attach themselves to.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Arrogant, Idiot
Source: inters.org

If you divide Christians into denominations, agnostics and atheists come in third, behind Catholics and Baptists. That's interesting when you contrast it with the lack of influence of nonbelievers.

Richard Dawkins
Christian, Atheist, Interesting
Interview with Chip Rowe, www.playboy.com. August 20, 2012.

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one. I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Design, Waiting
"The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design". Book by Richard Dawkins, September 28, 2015.

Society bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities. If I say something offensive to religious people, I'll be universally censured, including by many atheists.

Richard Dawkins
Religious, Atheist, People

The alternative which I favor is to renounce all euphemisms and grasp the nettle of the word atheism itself, precisely because it is a taboo word carrying frissons of hysterical phobia. Critical mass may be harder to achieve than with some non-confrontational euphemism, but if we did achieve it with the dread word atheist, the political impact would be all the greater.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Impact, Political

I'm sure Obama is an atheist, I'm sure Kennedy was an atheist, but I doubt if Pope Frank is.

Richard Dawkins
Atheist, Doubt, Pope
Interview with Bill Maher, 2013.

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