I do understand people when they say that you destroy the magic of childhood if you encourage too much skeptical questioning. Richard Dawkins More Quotes by Richard Dawkins More Quotes From Richard Dawkins The beauty of evolution is that it does provide an explanation of how you can get complexity out of simplicity. It does it by slow, gradual degree. At no point are you postulating the sudden coming into existence of a complicated being. Richard Dawkins degreessimplicitydoe Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [...] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis. Richard Dawkins departedscripturejesus 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 earthageyears The body is a survival machine programmed to propagate the genes that reside inside it. Richard Dawkins machinessurvivalbody Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. Mindless may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion. Richard Dawkins leadernew-yorkpeople People who believe the earth was created 6000 years ago, when it's actually 4.5 billion years old, should also believe the width of North America is 8 yards. That is the scale of the error. Richard Dawkins errorssciencebelieve It's about time we start criticizing faith. Richard Dawkins criticize It is time to stop the mealy-mouthed euphemisms: 'Nationalists', 'Loyalists', 'Communities', 'Ethnic Groups', 'Cultures', 'Civilizations'. Religions is the word you need. Religions is the word you are struggling hypocritially to avoid. Richard Dawkins communitystrugglecivilization When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong. Richard Dawkins viewsoppositeslying If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking will change it. Richard Dawkins wishful-thinkingifsthinking 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 going-awaychildrenpeople We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance. Richard Dawkins living-thingsexistencechance 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 atheismdesignreligion 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 hijackingcreativityideas We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment. Richard Dawkins selfishsurvivalscience Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories. Richard Dawkins rivalsjustifiedfavors Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours. Richard Dawkins testsflyingorder Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority. Richard Dawkins catatheistthinking 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 attitudeculturereligion DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. Richard Dawkins carednaknows
