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I could easily believe that religion could enhance health and hence survival, and that therefore there could be indeed be literally Darwinian survival value, Darwinian selection in favor of religion. None of that of course bears at all upon the truth value of the claims made by religions.

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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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'.
Richard Dawkins
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What's wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?
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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If you don't know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.
Richard Dawkins
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There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.
Richard Dawkins
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There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out.
Richard Dawkins
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Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.
Richard Dawkins
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Thus the creationist's favourite question What is the use of half an eye? Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye.
Richard Dawkins
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Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth.
Richard Dawkins
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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.
Richard Dawkins
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Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a Marxist child or an Anarchist child or a Post-modernist child. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. We need to encourage people to think carefully before labelling any child too young to know their own opinions and our adverts will help to do that.
Richard Dawkins
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There is another kind of altruism that seems to go beyond that, a kind of super-altruism, which humans appear to have. And I think that does need a Darwinian explanation.
Richard Dawkins
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What Francis [Collins] was just saying about Genesis was, of course, a little private quarrel between him and his Fundamentalist colleagues. It would be unseemly for me to enter in except to suggest that he'd save himself an awful lot of trouble if he just simply ceased to give them the time of day.
Richard Dawkins
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The present Luddism over genetic engineering may die a natural death as the computer-illiterate generation is superseded.... I fear that, if the green movement's high-amplitude warnings over GMOs turn out to be empty, people will be dangerously disinclined to listen to other and more serious warnings.
Richard Dawkins
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I'm not much given to straight, irony-free hero-worship.
Richard Dawkins
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Certainly science should continue to see whether we can find evidence for multiverses that might explain why our own universe seems to be so finely tuned.
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 animals are the most complicated things in the known universe.
Richard Dawkins
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If we want to know where the truth lies in particular cases, we have to look.
Richard Dawkins
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We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
Richard Dawkins