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I great difficulty having any respect for a religion that has so little confidence in the truth of its beliefs that it feels reduced to using threats in order to propagate those beliefs.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
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Biologist
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Kenya's capital
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More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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We have sexual lust even though we know perfectly well that, because we're using contraception, it is not going to result in the propagation of our genes. That doesn't matter, because the lust was built into our brains at a time when there was no contraception.
Richard Dawkins
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Two religions cannot both be right, because they contradict each other, yet they can both be wrong.
Richard Dawkins
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Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.
Richard Dawkins
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We should take astrology seriously. No, I don't mean we should believe in it. I am talking about fighting it seriously instead of humouring it as a piece of harmless fun.
Richard Dawkins
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I might respect you as a brilliant intellect, runner, musician or juggler. But respect your BELIEFS? Only if they're supported by evidence.
Richard Dawkins
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Each step is not too improbable for us to countenance, but when you add them up cumulatively over millions of years, you get these monsters of improbability, like the human brain and the rain forest. It should warn us against ever again assuming that because something is complicated, God must have done it.
Richard Dawkins
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Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.
Richard Dawkins
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Creationists are possibly gaining more political power. In the U.S., you are constantly hearing stories of school boards harassing teachers and trying to get textbooks banned.
Richard Dawkins
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We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes - the gibbons and orangutans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans but excludes humans.
Richard Dawkins
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A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.
Richard Dawkins
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[Invading Iraq] will unite the entire Arab world against the West.
Richard Dawkins
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...it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions.
Richard Dawkins
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My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.
Richard Dawkins
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What I can't understand is why you invoke improbability and yet you will not admit that you're shooting yourself in the foot by postulating something just as improbable, magicking into existence the word God.
Richard Dawkins
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I don't think God is an explanation at all. It's simply redescribing the problem.
Richard Dawkins
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It is interesting to ask whether there's any general reason why being religious might make you do nice things or indeed nasty things. It's possible that people do nice things because they're religious. One reason might be they're hoping for a reward in Heaven, which is not a very noble reason.
Richard Dawkins
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I speak as a private citizen and not as a representative of the Executive Branch of the United States government. The impression that people of faith are uniformly opposed to stem-cell research is not documented by surveys. In fact, many people of strong religious conviction think this can be a morally supportable approach.
Richard Dawkins
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Religion is a powerful weapon that can be used because it persuades people to do things. And thus it can be used for good or ill. But it should not be a powerful weapon at all.
Richard Dawkins
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The true scientific understanding of the nature of existence is so utterly fascinating how could you not want people to share it? Carl Sagan, I think, said 'when you're in love, you want to tell the world.' And who, on understanding a scientific view of reality, would not, as it were, fall in love and want to tell the world.
Richard Dawkins
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Cheetah genes cooperate with cheetah genes but not with camel genes, and vice versa. This is not because cheetah genes, even in the most poetic sense, see any virtue in the preservation of the cheetah species. They are not working to save the cheetah from extinction like some molecular World Wildlife Fund.
Richard Dawkins