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The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.

Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: March 26
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More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening.
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Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.
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When we talk about genes for anything, like a gene for being gay or a gene for being aggressive or something of that sort, that a gene for anything may not have been a gene for that thing under different environmental conditions.
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We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.
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Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunise against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria. Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin.
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Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense.
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Let us understand Darwinism so we can walk in the opposite direction when it comes to setting up society.
Richard Dawkins
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I don't want to sound callous. I mean, even if I have nothing to offer, that doesn't matter, because that still doesn't mean that what anybody else has to offer therefore has to be true.
Richard Dawkins
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If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!
Richard Dawkins
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Professor Challenger, Conan Doyle's science hero, was a sort of irascible man constantly bellowing at people, so he was a little bit of a departure from both of those stereotypes.
Richard Dawkins
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The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.
Richard Dawkins
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If you look up at the Milky Way through the eyes of Carl Sagan, you get a feeling in your chest of something greater than yourself. And it is. But it's not supernatural.
Richard Dawkins
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I'm a cultural Christian in the same way many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims.
Richard Dawkins
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I don't feel depressed. I feel elated.
Richard Dawkins
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Metaphors are fine if they aid understanding, but sometimes they get in the way.
Richard Dawkins
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Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.
Richard Dawkins
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Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation.
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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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.
Richard Dawkins
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If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope to eventually understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.
Richard Dawkins