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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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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
Clinton Richard Dawkins
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C. Richard Dawkins
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Biology

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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.
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You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.
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I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.
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Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. You don't have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about Nazism.
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The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudoscientific charlatans.
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I sympathize with politicians who have to watch every syllable they utter for fear it will be misused by somebody with an agenda.
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[If] there is mercy in nature, it is accidental. Nature is neither kind nor cruel but indifferent.
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Islamic myths are mostly actually plagiarized from the Christian ones, both biblically and in terms of modern creationism. If you read Islamic creationist literature, it's pretty much lifted from American evangelical literature.
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Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.
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Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.
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Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence.
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In the beginning was simplicity.
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I have a strong feeling that the subject of evolution is beautiful without the excuse of creationists needing to be bashed.
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My decision to be a scientist was a bit of a drift really, more or less by default.
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Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous.
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The feature of living matter that most demands explanation is that it is almost unimaginably complicated in directions that convey a powerful illusion of deliberate design.
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Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
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It is an absurd law [Section 295A of the Indian penal code] but also extremely dangerous because it gives fanatics, whether they are Hindus, Catholics or Muslims, a licence to be offended. It also allows people who are in dispute with you to make up false accusations of blasphemy.
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St. Augustine wrote that basically it is not possible to understand what was being described in Genesis. It was not intended as a science textbook. It was intended as a description of who God was, who we are and what our relationship is supposed to be with God.
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By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. -this quote is actually found in Carl Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, where he attributes it to engineer James Oberg, who says he stole it from someone else.
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