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The assignment of purpose to everything is called teleology. Children are native teleologists, and many never grow out of it.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
Actor
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Biologist
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Evolutionary Biologist
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Kenya's capital
Clinton Richard Dawkins
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C. Richard Dawkins
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Never
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Teleology
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More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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I guess there are some rights of parents with what they choose their children to learn, but I'm biased in favor of freeing children to learn and not letting parents be too doctrinaire in indoctrinating their children.
Richard Dawkins
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In true natural selection, if a body has what it takes to survive, its genes automatically survive because they are inside it. So the genes that survive tend to be, automatically, those genes that confer on bodies the qualities that assist them to survive.
Richard Dawkins
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The fact that somebody does good doesn't make their beliefs true.
Richard Dawkins
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Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose
Richard Dawkins
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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.
Richard Dawkins
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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
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Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god - from Ra to Shiva - in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.
Richard Dawkins
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My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a they as opposed to a we can be identified at all.
Richard Dawkins
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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.
Richard Dawkins
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Far from being demeaning to human spiritual values, scientific rationalism is the crowning glory of the human spirit. Of course you can use the products of science to do bad things, but you can use them to do good things too.
Richard Dawkins
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The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children
Richard Dawkins
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I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life.
Richard Dawkins
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Blindness to suffering is an inherent consequence of natural selection. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.
Richard Dawkins
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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.
Richard Dawkins
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We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
Richard Dawkins
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I think a fundamentalist is somebody who believes something unshakably and isn't going to change their mind.
Richard Dawkins
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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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I could easily believe that religion could enhance health and hence survival, and that therefore there could be indeed be literally Darwinian survival value, Darwinian selection in favor of religion. None of that of course bears at all upon the truth value of the claims made by religions.
Richard Dawkins
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It is universally accepted that an admission of atheism would be instant political suicide for any (U.S.) presidential candidate.
Richard Dawkins
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Absolutist morality doesn't have to come from religion but usually does.
Richard Dawkins