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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.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
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My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.
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You can't blame science for being used for evil purposes. What you can do is say, 'This is an exceedingly powerful tool.' And you want to make sure it is used for good purposes, not bad ones. That is a political decision.
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The Roman Catholic Church is an institution for whose gains the phrase ill-gotten might have been specially invented. And of all its money-making rip-offs, the selling of indulgences must surely rank among the greatest con tricks in history, the medieval equivalent of the Nigerian Internet scam but far more successful.
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If you are asking me if my more global purpose is a battle against religion, it is.
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Natural selection is anything but random.
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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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You don't believe that the Earth is round only if you're an astronaut. You don't believe Napoleon existed only if you're a historian. You believe these things because they're facts, proved by evidence.
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...there are no natural borderlines in evolution. The illusion of a borderline is created by the fact that the evolutionary intermediates happen to be extinct.
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I remember at the age of six regaling my poor little sister with stories about the planets, and how far away they were and which ones might have life.
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My God is not improbable to me. He has no need of a creation story for himself or to be fine-tuned by something else.
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It is time to stop the mealy-mouthed euphemisms: 'Nationalists', 'Loyalists', 'Communities', 'Ethnic Groups', 'Cultures', 'Civilizations'. Religions is the word you need. Religions is the word you are struggling hypocritially to avoid.
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The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as 'faith'.
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God's existence is either true or not. But calling it a scientific question implies that the tools of science can provide the answer.
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All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.
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At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.
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Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.
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My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot even dream about.
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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.
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Luke [the gospel writer] screws up his dating by tactlessly mentioning events that historians are capable of independently checking. There was indeed a census under Governor Quirinius - a local census, not one decreed by Caesar Augustus for the Empire as a whole - but it happened too late in 6 AD, long after Herod's death.
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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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