Richard Dawkins Quotes About Atheism

Quotes about: Atheism

• There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.

  Richard Dawkins

  Meaningful, Atheist, Responsibility

  "The God Delusion". Book by Richard Dawkins, October 2, 2006.

• 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.

  Richard Dawkins

  God, Religious, Atheist

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

  Richard Dawkins

  Funny, Trust, Laughter

  "The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder". Lecture, BBC1 Television, November 12, 1996.

• Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.

  Richard Dawkins

  Death, Spiritual, Religious

• 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

  Lying, Views, Opposites

  "One side can be wrong" by Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, www.theguardian.com. September 1, 2005.

• A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right.

  Richard Dawkins

  Design, Religion, Atheism

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheism, Nonsense, Ends

  Richard Dawkins (2017). “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist”, p.237, Random House

• 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.

  Richard Dawkins

  Faith, Atheist, Thinking

  Richard Dawkins' Speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival (April 15, 1992); quoted in "EDITORIAL: A scientist's case against God", "The Independent"(London), (p. 17), April 20, 1992.

• I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

  Richard Dawkins

  Death, Atheist, Learning

  "The Two Types of Faith" by Greg Cootsona, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 17, 2016.

• Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think.

  Richard Dawkins

  Faith, Atheist, Thinking

• We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Atheist, If There Is A God

  "The Root of All Evil?". Documentary, January 2006.

• 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

  Religious, Independent, People

  "The root of all evil?". www.smh.com.au. May 21, 2007.

• My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.

  Richard Dawkins

  Feelings, Understanding, Atheism

• If you're an atheist, you know, you believe, this is the only life you're going to get. It's a precious life. It's a beautiful life. Its something we should live to the full, to the end of our days. Where if you're religious and you believe in another life somehow, that means you don't live this life to the full because you think you're going to get another one. That's an awfully negative way to live a life. Being a atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily and fully

  Richard Dawkins

  Beautiful, Religious, Atheist

• Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well.

  Richard Dawkins

  Ignorance, Simple, Religion

  "Should Religion Impact Your Vote?" by Roy Speckhardt, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 7, 2011.

• The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  Richard Dawkins

  Funny, Sarcastic, Atheist

  River Out of Eden ch. 4 (1995)

• My last vestige of 'hands off religion' respect disappeared in the smoke and choking dust of September 11, 2001, followed by the 'National Day of Prayer,' when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place.

  Richard Dawkins

  Kings, Prayer, Dust

  Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.157, HMH

• 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?

  Richard Dawkins

  Respect, Atheist, Learning

  Speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, April 15, 1992.

• If you are offended by reading views that disagree with yours, then yes, you will be offended. However, it is not gratuitously offensive, it simply puts an argument, and if your views are strong enough, as I believe they are, you will be able to defend your views. You will not say, "Oh, it's offensive, it's offensive." You will say "No, you are wrong here and you are wrong here," and that's what you should do.

  Richard Dawkins

  Strong, Fear, Believe

• The less you think, the more you believe.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Thinking, Doubt

• Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religion, Atheism, Wish

• The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn't he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured?

  Richard Dawkins

  Fear, Son, Views

• Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.

  Richard Dawkins

  Evil, Religion, Atheism

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.347, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Views, Design

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.31, W. W. Norton & Company

• There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist, and quite good reasons for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren't so tragic.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Religion, Atheism

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