“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”
Faith
“I suppose if you look back to your early childhood you accept everything people tell you, and that includes a heavy dose of irrationality - you're told about tooth fairies and Father Christmas and things.”
ChristmasAll Quotes by Richard Dawkins
“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.”
Religion“The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.”
Faith“Isn'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?”
Sad“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
Religion“For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.”
Time“The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.”
Poetry“Segregation has no place in the education system.”
Education“Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.”
Car“We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
God“Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.”
Nature“Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.”
Computers“But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.”
Experience“Science coverage could be improved by the recognition that science is timeless, and therefore science stories should not need to be pegged to an item in the news.”
Science“At least the fundamentalists haven't tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.”
Faith“It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have.”
Religion“Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.”
Power“Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence.”
Age“We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.”
Technology“The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.”
God