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Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven.

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
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More quotes by Richard Dawkins

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I think there could be a very large number who are creationists by default. Those are the people I want to reach.
Richard Dawkins
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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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The time has come for people of reason to say: Enough is Enough! Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous.
Richard Dawkins
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There may be some deep questions about the cosmos that are forever beyond science. The mistake is to think they are therefore not beyond religion too.
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I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.
Richard Dawkins
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We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.
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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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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.
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If you're willing to answer yes to a God outside of nature, then there's nothing inconsistent with God on rare occasions choosing to invade the natural world in a way that appears miraculous.
Richard Dawkins
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When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong.
Richard Dawkins
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If all the evidence in the universe turned in favour of creationism, I would be the first to admit it, and I would immediately change my mind. As things stand, however, all available evidence (and there is a vast amount of it) favours evolution.
Richard Dawkins
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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
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False beliefs can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment.
Richard Dawkins
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I think that [Jay] Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf.
Richard Dawkins
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How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.
Richard Dawkins
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Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it?
Richard Dawkins
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I find many of answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist.
Richard Dawkins
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It doesn't hurt my feeling when I get vilified by fundamentalist religious people. I've actually made comedy out of it. I've made light of that.
Richard Dawkins
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Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false.
Richard Dawkins
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The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors.
Richard Dawkins