Quote

As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect.

Richard Dawkins

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
Actor
Author
Biologist
Epistemologist
Essayist
Ethologist
Evolutionary Biologist
Geneticist
Science Communicator
Science Writer
Screenwriter
Kenya's capital
Clinton Richard Dawkins
Clinton Dawkins
C. Richard Dawkins
C. Dawkins
CR Dawkins
R. Dawkins
Exciting
Teaches
Teach
Enterprise
Known
Scientific
Subverts
Religion
Philosophical
Saps
Science
Intellect
Sap
Change
Scientist
Fundamentalist
Mind
Available
Actively
Things
Minds
Hostile

More quotes by Richard Dawkins

Image
We have this one life, let's enjoy it, let's live it to the full and don't get so worked up about don't identify yourself so passionately with this business called religion.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I don't think God is an explanation at all. It's simply redescribing the problem.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Do you advocate the Ten Commandments as a guide to the good life? Then I can only presume that you don't know the Ten Commandments.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.
Richard Dawkins
Image
I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Evolution may explain some features of the moral law, but it can't explain why it should have any real significance.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The so-called sophisticated theologians, especially ones who are very nice, like Rowan Williams and Jonathan Sacks, you sometimes don't quite know where you are with them. You feel that when you attack them, you're attacking a wet sponge.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The truth is more magical - in the best and most exciting sense of the word - than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.
Richard Dawkins
Image
We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
Richard Dawkins
Image
People who believe in something for which there is not a shred of evidence act on that belief and, above all, impose their beliefs on others, they make me cross, and they make me especially cross when they impose their beliefs on defenceless children.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
Richard Dawkins
Image
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.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Religions do make claims about the universe--the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false.
Richard Dawkins
Image
In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it's got the wrong answers.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
Richard Dawkins
Image
It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).
Richard Dawkins
Image
Religious people split into three main groups when faced with science. I shall label them the know-nothings, the know-alls, and the no-contests.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.
Richard Dawkins
Image
The Bishop goes on to the human eye, asking rhetorically, and with the implication that there is no answer, 'How could an organ so complex evolve?' This is not an argument, it is simply an affirmation of incredulity.
Richard Dawkins
Image
Gould carried the art of bending over backward to positively supine lengths. Why shouldn't we comment on God, as scientists? ... A universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?
Richard Dawkins