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0eb5297 We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. philosophy Richard Dawkins
7a9fa2f The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. christianity religion god yahweh organized-religion Richard Dawkins
c5ed5ee We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so mass.. wonder death science inspirational Richard Dawkins
2a98819 There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point... The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. self-determination follow-your-bliss self-actualization existentialism Richard Dawkins
054290c More generally, as I shall repeat in Chapter 8, one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding. understanding satisfaction willful-ignorance Richard Dawkins
923154d A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so. religion indoctrination Richard Dawkins
ad5efe7 Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you. indoctrination critical-thinking Richard Dawkins
53e9fd6 Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are 'valid,' let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so. Richard Dawkins
c7256ab Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base though. morality morals Richard Dawkins
cf9a2d2 The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of pl.. evolution suffering fear science indifference design starvation disease purpose natural-selection Richard Dawkins
d46a1f0 To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries religion organized-religion Richard Dawkins
cc15a79 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 m.. enlightened sleep color meaning beauty motivational inspirational questions Richard Dawkins
9da1f37 Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong. faith parental-love parents child parenthood Richard Dawkins
eb94494 Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do. science inspirational altruism Richard Dawkins
9e2b49e I am thrilled to be alive at time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits. Richard Dawkins
d0cac76 The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite. wonder science beauty-in-nature Richard Dawkins
891eb13 The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do. religion religious-extremism Richard Dawkins
9cce14b You could give a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. 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 , , , , , and their colleagues. I'm not saying you're more intelligent than understanding science einstein aristotle crick francis-crick james-d-watson james-watson max-planck planck polymath watson charles-darwin darwin intellect knowledge isaac-newton newton Richard Dawkins
13eaad9 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. evolution page147 noremorse Richard Dawkins
eaa2b58 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. science genetics Richard Dawkins
99358ad 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. coming-out cats organization Richard Dawkins
fce8996 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? evolution god noremorse pg270 creator atheist Richard Dawkins
8aeaaa3 The only watchmaker is the blind forces of physics. Richard Dawkins
c8b2fd8 We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realize that we are apes. evolution Richard Dawkins
44bfc8b I mean it as a compliment when I say that you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer. Richard Dawkins
c8bca99 The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry. inquiry meme Richard Dawkins
5c35b58 Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many people are unable to understand that 'X is comforting' does not imply 'X is true'. Richard Dawkins
b489b4c Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, distinctly heard the voice of Jesus telling him to kill women, and he was locked up for life. says that God told him to invade Iraq (a pity God didn't vouchsafe him a revelation that there were no weapons of mass destruction). Richard Dawkins
2b14268 God is] a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser , a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, phillicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Richard Dawkins
9fa543d If all the evidence in the universe turned in favour of creationism, I would be the first to admit it, and I would immediately change my mind. As things stand, however, all available evidence (and there is a vast amount of it) favours evolution. Richard Dawkins
b55de14 There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habitutation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of ha.. wonder ordinary strange Richard Dawkins
1e0bcac Unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop being true. Richard Dawkins
a2212a1 I]sn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it? Richard Dawkins
efd6cf0 Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. truth inspirational Richard Dawkins
7bb3e17 Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false. evolution Richard Dawkins
067c066 Even those who do not, or cannot, avail themselves of a scientific education, choose to benefit from the technology that is made possible by the scientific education of others. science Richard Dawkins
b34afa0 Let us remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets a.. pantheist theist Richard Dawkins
054acb2 Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it? good religion science Richard Dawkins
192e708 The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion mixes explosively with (and gives strong sanction to) both. Only the willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today. Without a doubt it is the prime aggravator .. violence vendetta Richard Dawkins
e10643d Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purp.. science Richard Dawkins
46cfcbc If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. religion science Richard Dawkins
7838981 It is a simple logic truth that, short of mass emigration into space, with rockets taking off at the rate of several million per second, uncontrolled birth-rates are bound to lead to horribly increased death -rates. It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods. They express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation, and a n.. religion Richard Dawkins
9932efd 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! science god-delusion biology Richard Dawkins
86b3066 DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. Richard Dawkins
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