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Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
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If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it.
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Mutation is random natural selection is the very opposite of random.
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God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of science can provide the answer.
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There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.
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[Jay] Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life.
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I do disapprove very strongly of labelling children, especially young children, as something like 'Catholic children' or 'Protestant children' or 'Islamic children.'
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What's wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?
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What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up.
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Disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasoned argument because reasoned argument is drummed out of those trained in religion from the cradle.
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The less you think, the more you believe.
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My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about.
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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'.
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Molecular genetics can show off some surprising relationships like, for example, the close relationship of whales to hippopotamuses, which I think nobody ever guessed until molecular data was looked at. The closest relatives of whales are hippopotamuses, even closer than any other cloven-hoofed animals.
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I think Douglas [Adams] is writing with an eye to irony for adults at the same time as entertaining children.
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There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents.
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The body is a survival machine programmed to propagate the genes that reside inside it.
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[Jay] Gould sets up an artificial wall between the two worldviews that doesn't exist in my life. Because I do believe in God's creative power in having brought it all into being in the first place, I find that studying the natural world is an opportunity to observe the majesty, the elegance, the intricacy of God's creation.
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Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation.
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Quantum mechanics, that brilliantly successful flagship theory of modern science, is deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Eastern mystics have always been deeply mysterious and hard to understand. Therefore, Eastern mystics must have been talking about quantum theory all along.
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Suffering is a byproduct of evolution by natural selection, an inevitable consequence that may worry us in our more sympathetic moments but cannot be expected to worry a tiger - even if a tiger can be said to worry about anything at all - and certainly cannot be expected to worry its genes.
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