Richard Dawkins Quotes
Quotes by the Accomplished Scientist and Outspoken Atheist
Richard Dawkins is perhaps the world's most prominent Atheist. His book, The God Delusion, is a no-holds-barred assault on religion. His passion for science and his dislike of faith have made him one of the most controversial figures of public discourse and a central figure in the New Atheism movement. Here are some quotes by Professor Richard Dawkins.
Quotes by Dawkins on Science
Richard Dawkins, being a scientist by trade, holds a deep respect for the scientific method and often claims that he is "passionate about what's true." He believes science is the best vehicle for human understanding, and that it can show a more wonderful and beautiful universe than religion. Though he is impassioned about science, he also attempts to be realistic about its limitations.
- if you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so.
- We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes.
- The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear.
- The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudoscientific charlatans.
- Religions do make claims about the universe--the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false.
- Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain.
Quotes by Dawkins on Religion
Dawkins doesn't just assert the falsity of religion, he also posits that religion is immoral and encourages bad ways of thinking. His critique of religion is as forceful as the world has seen since Robert Ingersoll, and he does not take pains to avoid offending people.
- The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
- Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
- There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
- There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting... But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.
- If there is no God, why be good?...When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: ‘Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.
- I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
Richard Dawkin's sharp critique of religion and his defense of science have forever changed the world's discourse on faith. His words, though harsh and callous to some, are to others the clear, honest appraisal of how the world is that has been long overdue.
If one wishes to learn more about Richard Dawkins, information about him is available at his web site, RichardDawkins.net.
Related: Robert Ingersoll Quotes
Richard Dawkins
|
What do you think about this article?
Latest Articles