Richard Dawkins: Trending quotes (page 5)

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“One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.”

Richard Dawkins

The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Religion

“In the case of immigrants from Syria and Iraq I would like to see special preference given to apostates, people who have given up Islam, they are in particular danger.”

Richard Dawkins

In an interview to The Times — Richard Dawkins: Atheist academic calls for religion 'to be offended at every opportunity' http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/richard-dawkins-atheist-academic-calls-for-religion-to-be-offended-at-every-opportunity-a7043226.html (23 May 2016)

People

“This is where they come into their own, for there's money in hope: the more desperate the hope, the richer the pickings.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Snake Oil"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Money , Hope

“There has been progress in design, but not progress in accomplishment.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 7 “Constructive Evolution” (p. 186)

“Evolution normally does not come to a halt, but constantly ‘tracks’ the changing environment.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 7 “Constructive Evolution” (p. 179)

Change

“People are terrified of being thought racist, there’s an awful confusion in many people’s minds. They think Islam is a race, which of course it isn’t”

Richard Dawkins
People , Thinking

“Contrary to earlier prejudices, there is nothing inherently progressive about evolution.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 7 “Constructive Evolution” (p. 178)

“I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented. (p. 57 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007)”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

The God Delusion (2006)

God

“Ten years ago, you could have traveled thousands of miles through the United States and never seen a baseball cap turned back to front. Today, the reverse baseball cap is ubiquitous. I do not know what the pattern of geographical spread of the reverse baseball cap precisely was, but epidemiology is certainly among the professions primarily qualified to study it.”

Richard Dawkins book Viruses of the Mind

Viruses of the Mind (1993)

Travel , Study

“What expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 79

Question

“I don't believe you until you tell me, do you really believe, for example, if they say they are Catholic, "Do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ? Are you seriously telling me you believe that? Are you seriously saying that wine turns into blood?" Mock them. Ridicule them. In public. Don't fall for the convention that we're all too polite to talk about religion. Religion is not off the table. Religion is not off limits. Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated and need to be challenged and, if necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt.”

Richard Dawkins

Reason Rally, National Mall, Washington, DC,

Religion , Universe , Wine , Christ

“Once again, modern theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac should not be taken as literal fact. And, once again, the appropriate response is twofold. First, many many people, even to this day, do take the whole of their scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Second, if not as literal fact, how should we take the story? As an allegory? Then an allegory for what? Surely morals could one derive from this appalling story? Remember, all I am trying to establish for the moment is that we do not, as a matter of fact, derive our morals from scripture. Or, if we do, we pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice bits and reject the nasty. But then we must have some independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criterion which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is presumably available to all of us whether we are religious or not.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 275 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007

People , World

“With so many mind-bytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.”

Richard Dawkins book Viruses of the Mind

Viruses of the Mind (1993)

Children , Effort

“On the properties of God: "Such a bandwidth! God, who may not have a brain made of neurons, or a CPU made of silicon, but if he has the powers attributed to him he must have something far more elaborately and non-randomly constructed than the largest brain or the largest computer we know."”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 184

God

“The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as "faith."”

Richard Dawkins book Viruses of the Mind

Viruses of the Mind (1993)

Faith , Feeling

“More generally (and this applies to Christianity no less than to Islam), what is really pernicious is the practice of teaching children that faith itself is a virtue. Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument. Teaching children that unquestioned faith is a virtue primes them - given certain other ingredients that are not hard to come by - to grow up into potentially lethal weapons for future jihads or crusades.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), pp. 347-348 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007

Children , Faith , Evil , Future

“Molecular evidence suggests that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between five and seven million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards … in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on … How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Gaps in the Mind"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Way , Personality

“Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 1 “Explaining the Very Improbable” (p. 6)

“A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. His existence is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 178

God , Universe

“There is no general reason to expect evolution to be progressive – even in the weak, value-neutral sense. There will be times when increased size of some organ is favoured and other times when decreased size is favoured. Most of the time, average-sized individuals will be favoured in the population and both extremes will be penalised. During these times the population exhibits evolutionary stasis (i. e., no change) with respect to the factor being measured. If we had a complete fossil record and looked for trends in some particular dimension, such as leg length, we would expect to see periods of no change alternating with fitful continuations or reversals in direction – like a weathervane in changeable, gusty weather.”

Richard Dawkins

The Evolutionary Future of Man (1993)

Sense , Change , Time , Weather