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Metaphors are fine if they aid understanding, but sometimes they get in the way.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
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Biologist
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Evolutionary Biologist
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Kenya's capital
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Sometimes
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The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal.
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I personally would consider it to be an honour to be fossilized.
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I do like Philip Pullman.And that's an exception because Philip Pullman's books allow magic.
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We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. ... This is exactly what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object's sole reason for living.
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Blindness to suffering is an inherent consequence of natural selection. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.
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If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!
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Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as Dutchman's Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman's Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance.
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It's about time we start criticizing faith.
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Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing I find the reality thrilling.
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When we talk about genes for anything, like a gene for being gay or a gene for being aggressive or something of that sort, that a gene for anything may not have been a gene for that thing under different environmental conditions.
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The gravitational constant, if it were off by one part in a hundred million million, then the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang would not have occurred in the fashion that was necessary for life to occur. When you look at that evidence, it is very difficult to adopt the view that this was just chance.
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False beliefs can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment.
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If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.
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Being an atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily, and fully.
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The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to save the creation theory is to assume that God deliberately planted enormous quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened.
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Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.
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I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.
Richard Dawkins
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Certainly science should continue to see whether we can find evidence for multiverses that might explain why our own universe seems to be so finely tuned.
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Secularism is categorically not saying that the religious may not speak out publicly or have a say in public life. It is about saying that religion alone should not confer a privileged say in public life, or greater influence on it. It really is as simple as that.
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The whole of technology depends on a scientific background, and of course technology can be used for evil purposes. You can't blame science for that.
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