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6729eb0
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I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man'..
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Richard Dawkins |
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6cbfe4e
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yn nw`y twhm st gr bwr khnym hrqdr ymn bh ntyj nfrtngyzy bynjmd, byd bh an Htrm gdhsht, fqT bh yn khTr khh ymn st.
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Richard Dawkins |
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73655e1
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Perhaps, then, the words male and female have no general meaning.
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Richard Dawkins |
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66ef3b5
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If you need a geography lesson in order to know where Africa is - if, by age seventeen, you have somehow failed to imbibe such knowledge by osmosis or simple curiosity - you surely don't have the sort of mind that would benefit from a university education.
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Richard Dawkins |
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17f3465
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At the age of three and a half the Taung Child was eaten by an eagle. The evidence is that damage marks to the eye sockets of the fossil are identical to marks made by modern eagles on modern monkeys as they rip out their eyes. Poor little Taung Child, shrieking on the wind as you were borne aloft by the aquiline fury, you would have found no comfort in your destined fame, two and a half million years on, as the type specimen of
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Richard Dawkins |
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8b66cde
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Evolutionary psychologists suggest that, just as the eye is an evolved organ for seeing, and the wing an evolved organ for flying, so the brain is a collection of organs (or 'modules') for dealing with a set of specialist data-processing needs.
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evolution
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Richard Dawkins |
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493b254
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The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.
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faith
religion
prejudism
rationality
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Richard Dawkins |
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6760d96
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It is interesting to wonder whether taxonomists of the future may regret the way our generation messed around with genomes.
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science
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Richard Dawkins |
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ea2c10d
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As J. B. S. Haldane said when asked what evidence might contradict evolution, 'Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.
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Richard Dawkins |
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85a19a0
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Sozcukler bizim hizmetkarlarimizdir, efendilerimiz degil.
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Richard Dawkins |
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bd222b3
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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.90 This may explain some of the sheer strangeness of the Bible. But unfortunately it is this same weird ..
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Richard Dawkins |
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eb9ac22
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We are in one galaxy called the Milky Way. When you look at the Milky Way's next-door neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, your telescope is a time machine taking you back two and a half million years. There's a cluster of five galaxies called Stephan's Quintet, which we see through the Hubble telescope spectacularly colliding with each other. But we see them colliding 280 million years ago. If there are aliens in one of those colliding galaxie..
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Richard Dawkins |
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d77aed4
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O]ur percept is an elaborate computer model in the brain, constructed on the basis of information coming from [the environment], but transformed in the head into a form in which that information can be used. Wavelength differences in the light out there become coded as 'colour' differences in the computer model in the head. Shape and other attributes are encoded in the same kind of way, encoded into a form that is convenient to handle. The ..
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intelligence
qualia
evolutionary-psychology
consciousness
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Richard Dawkins |
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1a4bd73
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Areas where there is a lack of data, or a lack of understanding, are automatically assumed to belong, by default, to God.
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Richard Dawkins |
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a0e8a25
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Of course they don't function as gills, but five-week human embryos can be regarded as little pink fishes, with gills.
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Richard Dawkins |
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496ad16
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Esli kembridzhskii teolog -- khristianin standartnogo tolka, to sam on, po vsei vidimosti, verit v tu ili inuiu kombinatsiiu sleduiushchikh utverzhdenii: * V praotecheskie vremena devstvennitsa rodila syna bez vmeshatel'stva muzhchiny. * Etot syn, ne imevshii biologicheskogo ottsa, navestil usopshego druga po imeni Lazar', ot kotorogo uzhe iskhodil trupnyi zapakh, i tot nezamedlitel'no ozhil. * Etot zhe ne imeiushchii ottsa chelovek vernuls..
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Richard Dawkins |
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ae1ff60
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Os livros de fisica podem ser complicados, mas eles, assim como os carros e os computadores, sao produtos de objetos biologicos - cerebros humanos. Os objetos e os fenomenos que um livro de fisica descreve sao mais simples que uma unica celula do corpo de seu autor. E o autor consiste em trilhoes de celulas, muitas delas diferentes umas das outras, organizadas com arquitetura intrincada e engenharia de precisao para formar uma maquina capaz..
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science
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Richard Dawkins |
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8381e70
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We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.* 12
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Richard Dawkins |
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d8290ac
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Primenenie protivozachatochnykh sredstv inogda kritikuiut kak <>. Da, eto tak -- ochen' protivoestestvennoe. Beda v tom, chto protivoestestvenno i vseobshchee blagosostoianie. Ia dumaiu, chto bol'shinstvo iz nas schitaet vseobshchee blagosostoianie v vysshei stepeni zhelatel'nym. Nevozmozhno, odnako, dobit'sia protivoestestvennogo vseobshchego blagosostoianiia, esli ne poiti pri etom takzhe na protivoestestvennuiu regul..
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philosophy
medicine
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Richard Dawkins |
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f8ecbe0
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Next to the true beauty and magic of the real world, supernatural spells and stage tricks seem cheap and tawdry by comparison. The magic of reality is neither supernatural nor a trick, but - quite simply - wonderful. Wonderful, and real. Wonderful because real.
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Richard Dawkins |
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3c0787b
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Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.
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humorous
deism
pantheism
theism
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Richard Dawkins |
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305f17d
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Pat Robertson would be harmless comedy, were he less typical of those who today hold power and influence in the United States.
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Richard Dawkins |
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13509ee
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The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. --RALPH WALDO EMERSON
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Richard Dawkins |
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db16927
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Natural selection is a beguiling counterfeiter of deliberate purpose.
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Richard Dawkins |
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b83ed10
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The fact that we slowly apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discover it, should not subtract from its wonder.
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Richard Dawkins |
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e37a3e6
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In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
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universe
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Richard Dawkins |
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d8a5d67
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When we look at a solid lump of iron or rock, we are 'really' looking at what is almost entirely empty space. It looks and feels solid and opaque because our sensory systems and brains find it convenient to treat it as solid and opaque. It is convenient for the brain to represent a rock as solid because we can't walk through it. 'Solid' is our way of experiencing things that we can't walk through or fall throug, because of the electromagnet..
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science
brain
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Richard Dawkins |
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358d24f
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With only a little imagination we can see the gene as sitting at the centre of a radiating web of extended phenotypic power.
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Richard Dawkins |
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e130563
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Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 'When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.
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Richard Dawkins |
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4ae9678
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Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of ..
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Richard Dawkins |
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b2b9494
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The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal--God is the Omnipotent Father--hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. --GORE VIDAL
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Richard Dawkins |
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19c018c
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hrqdr hm khh `mrmn khwth bshd, gr thnyhy z an r hdr dhym y Srf glyh z yn khnym khh zndgy `bth w byHSl st y gr (mnnd khwdkhn) bgwyym khh zndgy khsthkhnndh st, dshnm drshty bh trylywnh nfry ddhym khh hrgz bkht zystn r nyftnd.
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Richard Dawkins |
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7e17b09
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most of us happily disavow fairies, astrology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, without first immersing ourselves in books of Pastafarian theology etc.
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religion
pz-myers
logical-fallacy
theology
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Richard Dawkins |
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136c123
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What if God is a scientist who regards honest seeking after truth as the supreme virtue?
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Richard Dawkins |
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8822dd0
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T]he form that an animal's subjective experience takes will be a property of the internal computer model. That model will be designed, in evolution, for its suitability for useful internal representation, irrespective of the physical stimuli that come to it from outside. Bats and we need the same kind of internal model for representing the position of objects in three-dimensional space. The fact that bats construct their internal model with..
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intelligence
qualia
evolutionary-psychology
consciousness
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Richard Dawkins |
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df2295c
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dr dny admhyy hstnd khh nmydnh tlsh dr npdhyrftn tkhml drwyny drnd. bh nZr myrsd anh bh sh grwh tqsym myshwnd, anhyy khh bh dlyl mdhhby mykhwhnd tkhml drwG bshd. anhyy khh dlyly bry nkhr tkhml nmyybnd m bh dlyl sysy y `tqdy mfhwm ntkhb Tby`y r Zlmnh w dwr z nSf mydnd y grysht njdprstnh anh b tkhml nszgr st w dr akhr anhyy khh b mkhlft mytwnnd hyhw yjd khnnd w brnmhhy mrdmpsnd khwby thyh khnnd.
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Richard Dawkins |
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9c3e83b
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bh qwl lwy'ys bwnwy'l, fylmsz shhyr spnyyy, "khd w myhn tym shkhstnpdhyry r tshkhyl mydhnd khh hmhy rkhwrdhy srkhwb w khwnryzy r myshkhnd."
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Richard Dawkins |
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c4875a1
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I know that not all my readers like my digressions, but the research that has been done on Caenorhabditis elegans is such a ringing triumph of science that you aren't going to stop me.
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science
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Richard Dawkins |
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cd288b9
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Many religious people find it hard to imagine how, without religion, one can be good, or would even want to be good.
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Richard Dawkins |
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2f4b866
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There is in every village a torch - the teacher: and an extinguisher - the clergyman. -VICTOR HUGO
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Richard Dawkins |
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67159d3
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I am inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 'When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.
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Richard Dawkins |
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d11bfb8
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Darwin singled out the eye as posing a particularly challenging problem: 'To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.' Creationists gleefully quote this sentence again and aga..
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evolution
creationism
irreducible-complexity
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Richard Dawkins |
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98dfa4d
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Darwin himself said as much: 'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.' Darwin could find no such case, and nor has anybody since Darwin's time, despite strenuous, indeed desperate, efforts. Many candidates for this holy grail of creationism have been proposed. None ha..
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evolution
creationism
irreducible-complexity
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Richard Dawkins |
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e7287c6
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It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests. As my friend Matt Ridley has written, 'Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.' Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason: it gives them something to do. More generally, as I shall ..
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Richard Dawkins |