“Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.”

— Richard Dawkins , book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 176

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Richard Dawkins 322

English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941

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