Richard Dawkins Quotes About Evidence

Quotes about: Evidence

• People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you'd never be confident of things like 'My wife loves me'. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn't purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.

  Richard Dawkins

  Love, Kindness, Real

  Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain”, p.246, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

  Richard Dawkins

  Education, Atheist, Children

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.300, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence, as opposed to tradition, authority, revelation or faith, they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Children, Work Out

  "Richard Dawkins's backwards logic over atheist schooling" by Andrew Brown, www.theguardian.com. June 29, 2010.

• Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Belief, Results

  Richard Dawkins (1995). “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life”, Basic Books (AZ)

• 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.

• Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops.

  Richard Dawkins

  Death, Religious, Pride

  Richard Dawkins (2017). “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist”, p.267, Random House

• Faith is belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that's also the definition of delusion.

  Richard Dawkins

  Faith, Definitions, Belief

• Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private 'revelation'.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Book, People

• Religious faith, is a state of mind, that leads people to believe in something, it doesn't matter what, without a whisper of doubt, or a whiff of evidence, and believe so strongly in some cases, that they are prepare to kill and die for it, without the need for further justification.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Believe, People

• 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.

• Next time that somebody tells you something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?' And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Thinking, Giving

  Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.248, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.

  Richard Dawkins

  Strong, Believe, Religion

• But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something - it doesn't matter what - in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that 'evolution itself is a matter of faith' so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Silly, People

• A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, People, Delusion

  "The atheist". Interview with Gordy Slack, www.salon.com. April 30, 2005.

• So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. 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

  Atheist, Father, Science

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

• I do believe that nice religious people make the world safe for extremists by teaching us [...] that faith is a virtue, teaching us that there's something good about holding beliefs without any substantiating evidence. Once you buy into that, [...] then the door is opened to extremists who defend their extremism by saying, 'Oh well, it's my faith, you can't touch it, you can't criticise my faith, I don't even need to defend it because faith is faith.'

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Nice, Believe

  "Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". Interview with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

• Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

  Richard Dawkins

  Prejudice, Evidence

• I am passionate about truth and passionate about clarity, and I don't regard myself as particularly militant or aggressive. I simply wish to discuss what is true and to listen to evidence and put evidence forward to other people and have a sensible, sane, moderated argument.

  Richard Dawkins

  People, Wish, Passionate

  Interview with George Negus, www.sbs.com.au. March 7, 2010.

• Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water.

  Richard Dawkins

  Strong, Hands, Water

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.154, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.

  Richard Dawkins

  Fighting, Philosopher, Arguing

  "The atheist". Interview with Gordy Slack, www.salon.com. April 30, 2005.

• People who believe in something for which there is not a shred of evidence act on that belief and, above all, impose their beliefs on others, they make me cross, and they make me especially cross when they impose their beliefs on defenceless children.

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Believe, People

  "Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". Interview with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

• Religion shows a pattern of heredity which I think is similar to genetic heredity. ... There are hundreds of different religious sects, and every religious person is loyal to just one of these. ... The overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one their parents belonged to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained-glass, the best music when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing compared to the matter of heredity.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Science, Thinking

• Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.

  Richard Dawkins

  Science, People, Religion

  "Has the world changed?". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2001.

• Science shares with religion the claim that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life, and the cosmos. But there the resemblance ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religion, Atheism, Cosmos

  Richard Dawkins (1995). “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life”, Basic Books (AZ)

• [Creationists have] lost in the courts of law; they've long ago lost in the halls of science; and they continue to lose with every new piece of evidence in support of evolution. Taking offense is all they've got left.

  Richard Dawkins

  Long Ago, Law, Support

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