Darwin’s great insight was that life evolved steadily and slowly, inching its way gradually over four billion years. Natural selection, not a divine designer, was the sculptor of life. So evolution driven by Darwin’s motor of natural selection gets us to the top of mount improbable. From primeval simplicity to ultimate complexity. The design hypothesis doesn’t even begin to do that. Because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves. Who made the designer? Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil? The God Delusion, 2006
The Reverend William Paley writing half a century before Darwin put the case with his famous watchmaker argument. Imagine, Paley said, taking a walk on a heath. If you came across a rock you wouldn’t be surprised. The rock might have lain there for ever. It doesn’t need explaining. But a watch on the heath would demand an explanation. Its existence and complexity would require a big explanation ... There must be a divine watchmaker. Richard Dawkins, Why We Are Here
The Blind Watchmaker – which would set the stage for his role as a defender of science against the claims of Creationists. Beautiful Minds: Professor Richard Dawkins, BBC 2010
The Creationists fondness for gaps in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Richard Dawkins, The Times online article 21st May 2005, ‘Creationism: God’s Gift to the Ignorant’
I don’t like giving them the oxygen of respectability, the feeling that if they’re up on a platform debating with a scientist, there must be real disagreement. One side of the debate is wholly ignorant. It would be as though you knew nothing of physics and were passionately arguing against Einstein’s theory of relativity. Richard Dawkins, Times online article 19th July 2008
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
The logic of Creationist arguments is always the same. Some natural phenomenon is too statistically improbable, too complex, too beautiful, too awe-inspiring to have come into existence by chance. Design is the only alternative to Chance that the author can imagine, therefore Design must have done it. And Science’s answer to this faulty logic is also always the same: Design is not the only alternative to Chance. Natural Selection is the better alternative ... This kind of argument is a failure of the imagination. Richard Dawkins, lecture Berkeley University 2008
Preposterous mind-tricking falsehood. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful theologians such as Bonhoeffer is that gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide. ibid.
Creationists are deeply enamoured of the fossil record, because they have been taught (by each other) to repeat, over and over, the mantra that it is full of ‘gaps’. ‘Show me your “intermediates”!’ They fondly (very fondly) imagine that these ‘gaps’ are an embarrassment to evolutionists. Actually, we are lucky to have any fossils at all, let alone the massive numbers that we now do have to document evolutionary history – large numbers of which, by any standards, constitution beautiful ‘intermediates’ ... It is a bonus that we do actually have the rich seams of fossils to mine, and more are discovered every day. The fossil evidence for evolution in many major animal groups is wonderfully strong. Nevertheless there are, of course, gaps, and creationists love them observingly. Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, 2009
Contemporary court cases often concern an allegedly new version of creationism called Intelligent Design or ID. Don’t be fooled. There’s nothing new about ID. It’s just Creationism under another name. Richard Dawkins, lecture An Atheist’s Call to Arms
Teach the controversy? What controversy? Richard Dawkins, The Purpose of Purpose, March 2009
It’s not helpful to postulate a creator because the creator is the very kind of thing that needs an explanation. Richard Dawkins
It’s childish to blame God for things that are going wrong. It’s idiotic ... We don’t think that God designed us and the universe after all, and if he did, he did it with such cruel ineptitude. Christopher Hitchens v Mark Roberts, debate 2007
Some design. Some father. Some caring God. Some designing supervisor. Collision: Christopher Hitchens v Douglas Wilson, debate 2009
Again if this was the plan, was it made by someone who likes us? ... And if so, why have 99.9% of all the other species that have ever been created already died out? As part of what plan was that? Christopher Hitchens, lecture 6th October 2009
The planner must be either very capricious, really toying with his creation ... or very cruel and very callous or just perhaps very different, or some combination of all of the above. ibid.
It’s some plan, isn’t it? With mass destruction, pitiless extermination, annihilation going on all the time. And all of this set in motion on a scale that’s absolutely beyond our imagination, in order that the Pope can tell people not to jerk off. Christopher Hitchens v Rabbi David Wolpe, debate Boston 2010
Once you assume a creator and a plan it makes us objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well ... And over us to supervise this is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea. Christopher Hitchens v Tony Blair: Is Religion a Force for Good in the World? debate 2010
What if it was true nonetheless ... that we all part of a grand divine design? What would that actually mean if it were to be true? Well it would mean a regime of permanent supervision and surveillance over our lives and our personalities ... Why do you want such a thing to be true? Christopher Hitchens, lecture ‘The Moral Necessity of Atheism’
After Darwin, God’s role changes from being the designer of all creatures, great and small, to being the designer of the laws of nature, from which natural selection can unfold, to being just perhaps the chooser of the laws. Daniel C Dennett
We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation, he is unworthy even of man. Sam Harris
They believe that we were created from mud with divine breath sometime in the last six thousand years. Sam Harris, lecture New York Society for Ethical Culture 2005
Ultimately, did God create the universe in the first place? Professor Stephen Hawking, Did God Create the Universe?
An expanding universe does not preclude a creator but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 1991
Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. It is not necessary to invoke God. Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, 2010
What was God doing before the divine creation? Stephen Hawking
Respond: Stephen Hawking has not yet disproved God’s role in creation: The existence of the universe cannot be explained by science alone ... The skills that make one good at physics are not necessarily the skills that one make good at philosophy. Philip Goff, article The Guardian
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies
What cause
Moved the Creator in his holy rest
Through all eternity so late to build
In chaos, and, the work begun, how soon
Absolved. John Milton, Paradise Lost VII:90
Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in
The great Creator from his work return’d
Magnificent, his six days’ work, a world! ibid. VII:566
The planets in their stations listening stood,
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
Open, ye everlasting gates, they sung,
Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in
The great creator from his work returned
Magnificent, his six day’s work, a world. ibid. VII:573
There’s been an effort within the scientific community to censor out [tautology] information against evolution ... Teach the controversy ... Scientist are now claiming that they are the only ones who can speak on this issue. Wendy Richards, Concerned Women for America, Richard Dawkins attempting interview