Much of the Bible and the Koran is life-destroying gibberish. ibid.
Perhaps we have to confront the fact that we’re hardwired for religion too. That no amount of rationality or science or modernity is ever going to relieve us of it. This is what we are – most of us ... The problem I think for atheists is that there are so many very clever sane responsible people like the Archbishop of Canterbury who believe in a sky-God. And who think that gathering in a large beautiful barn on a Sunday and sending up your thoughts is actually going to influence future events. It does seem a remarkable set of beliefs to me. Ian McEwan, interview Professor Richard Dawkins
I don’t believe that anybody has done terrible deeds in the name of atheism. Why would they? What would be the point? ... Neither of them were representing atheism. Atheism is not responsible for anything that they do. Religion was responsible for what the Spanish Inquisition did. Professor Richard Dawkins, interview Have Your Say
What happens as we move on and leave religion behind? What will guide and inspire us in a world free from all gods? How can an atheist find meaning in life? Richard Dawkins, Sex, Death and The Meaning of Life I: Sin, Channel 4 2012
Atheists may think they’ve given up God but it’s only human to cling to the idea that things happen for a reason. ibid.
I suspect the reason is that most people ... have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn’t quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution.
I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things. Richard Dawkins, cited The New Humanist, the Journal of the Rationalist Press Association vol 107 no 2
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in; some of us just go one god further. (Atheism & Gods) Richard Dawkins: Root of All Evil? The God Delusion, Channel 4 2006
What I want to urge upon you is militant atheism. Richard Dawkins, lecture An Atheist’s Call to Arms
What is an atheist? An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the Golden Calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one step further. ibid.
I suspect that the word Atheist itself remains a stumbling block far out of proportion to what it actually means. ibid.
I don’t believe that anybody has done terrible deeds in the name of atheism. Why would they? What would be the point? Professor Richard Dawkins, interview Have Your Say
Coming out as an atheist can cost an academic his or her job in some parts of America, and many choose to keep quiet about their atheism. Richard Dawkins
You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Being an atheist is nothing to be apologetic about. On the contrary, it is something to be proud of, standing tall to face the far horizon, for atheism nearly always indicates a healthy independence of mind, and, indeed, a healthy mind. ibid.
The status of atheists in America today is on a par with that of homosexuals fifty years ago. ibid.
Anecdotes of such prejudice against atheists abound, but Margaret Downey, of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, maintains systematic records of such cases. Her database of incidents, categorized under community, schools, workplace, media, family and government, includes examples of harassment, loss of jobs, shunning by family and even murder. Downey’s documented evidence of the hatred and misunderstanding of atheists makes it easy to believe that it is, indeed, virtually impossible for an honest atheist to win a public election in America. ibid.
What matters is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does. ibid.
The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something. ibid.
Mormonism is possibly intelligently designed rather less intelligently. Richard Dawkins with Dan Dennett, In Conversation Oxford 2012
It’s no accident that religions around the world have used unison singing and chanting. ibid. Dennett
A number of social institutions depend on the ignorance of those that they exploit. ibid.
This easily maintained ignorance is the life-blood of religious solidarity. ibid.
Religion ... is unravelling itself at a great rate. ibid.
They manipulate the metaphors ... This ever-revising set of metaphors. ibid.
The fib of all fibs that you can’t be good without God. ibid.
They’ve always been lots of offshoots, religions have come and gone ... There’s probably been ten religions or a hundred religions that nobody has ever heard of for every one that we have any historical record of. ibid.
The fastest growing category in the world is no religion. ibid.
The battle for evolution is just a skirmish in a larger war. A larger war for rationality, for scepticism, for critical thinking, for a rational scientific view. Richard Dawkins, with Dan Dennett & Sam Harris & Ayaan Hirsi Ali, GAC Melbourne 2012
What is the benefit to a religion of being so unpleasant? ibid.
Why are there atheist clergy at all? Daniel C Dennett, lecture AAI 2009, ‘The Evolution of Confusion’
There’s just no way that you can politely suggest to somebody that they have devoted their life to a folly. Dan Dennett, with Richard Dawkins & Sam Harris & Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I can’t even read this. Proposition Alpha ... It’s in Turkish. But I believe it’s true. Daniel C Dennett, lecture AAI 2007, ‘Good Reasons for Believing in God’
We can pass the buck to the experts. ibid.
They insist that they don’t understand. They make a special, marvellous glory of the fact that the central propositions of their faith are incomprehensible even to the experts. Now this is just bizarre. ibid.
There are no good reasons for believing that god exists. And plenty of good reasons for believing that God does not exist. But there are several good reasons for declaring a belief in God. ibid.
They just don’t think about it ... Whatever those formulae mean ... it’s true. ibid.
They think that belief in God is for some reason obligatory. ibid.
They contrive to believe in God. ibid.
Strategic reasons: Their fear of God, their fear of a vengeful God ... Catastrophic collapse of consensus ... There are very good reasons to lie ... The belief by so many religious people that they have to cling tenaciously with white knuckles to their religious declarations. ibid.
Can we reason with them? No. ibid.
The very discussion of the issue undermines the consensus. ibid.
We are threatening them with a choice between betrayal and lying. ibid.
They passed the buck to the deceived. ibid.
We have to confront the murkiness. ibid.
The Concorde fallacy: When one makes a hopeless investment: I can’t stop now. ibid.
What we’ve seen is the evolution of the God concept in the last few thousand years from Yahweh [mountain] ... to the Ground of all Being. ibid.
The weathering of the God concept. ibid.
We all know people who deny that they’re atheists. Daniel Dennett, lecture Global Atheist Conference 2012, ‘How to Tell You’re an Atheist’
There’s the cognitive dissonance. ibid.
Of those 54% [UK] census Christians ... Half of them hadn’t attended a church service in the last year. ibid.
The son of God – how can you believe that? ibid.
There are better ways to help people lead better lives. ibid.
The unembarrassed exploitation of this convenient dodge by critics – as if they had never noticed how they are availing themselves of a parlour trick. ibid.
How do you tell wishful thinking from genuine belief? ibid.
Scientists know the anguish of confronting awful facts. ibid.