I suspect that religion is simply a parasite on a much older moral sense ... But it is surely far more moral to do good things for their own sake rather than as a way of sucking up to God. Our true sense of right and wrong has nothing to do with religion. I believe there is kindness, charity and generosity in human nature. And I think there is a Darwinian explanation for this. Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil? The Virus of Faith
Individuals in our ancestral past benefited from not religion per se but from psychological predispositions which could manifest themselves in the form of religion. Richard Dawkins, In Confidence 2010
Our bodies are survival machines for genes. Richard Dawkins, Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life II, Channel 4 2012
Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators. Professor Richard Dawkins
Everything that is alive is a cousin of us ... We are all descended from one remote ancestor which lived probably between three and four thousand million years ago. Richard Dawkins, lecture 1: Waking Up in the Universe 1991
Meet the Reverend William Paley. An old enemy of evolution. He put forward the most lucid argument to the existence of a creator. And his argument has been used ever since to try and shoot down Darwin. Paley likened all living things to a clock or watch. Random forces, he said, cannot explain how who all these beautiful springs and gears came together to tell time, nor can they explain the organs of living things. No purposeless process could ever fashion such intricate detail. No blind leap of chance could ever construct such complex machinery. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, BBC Horizon 1987
Not vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in Nature, it is the blind watchmaker. ibid.
The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. ibid.
Natural Selection ... has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker 1986 ch1
However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead. ibid.
The essence of life is statistically improbability on a colossal scale. ibid. ch11
Charles Darwin turned our world upside down. His theory of evolution by natural selection is one of the most profound and far-reaching ideas in human history. It’s also, alas, one of the most controversial. Science now has the evidence that proves evolution is true, yet today, incredibly, the opposition to Darwin is more fiercely vocal than ever, denying plain facts in more and more elaborate ways. Richard Dawkins, God Strikes Back: The Genius of Charles Darwin, Channel 4 2008
The evidence supports it: evolution is the plain truth. ibid.
Creationism’s next best strategy is not flat denial but to claim there is evidence against evolution, and that a genuine debate is yet to be had. This is the creationists’ favourite claim in America where the battle between faith and science really rages. ibid.
Natural Selection is the driving force of our evolution. But that doesn’t mean that society ought to be run on Darwinian lines. As a scientist I’m thrilled by Natural Selection; but as a human being I abhor it as a principle for organising society. Richard Dawkins, The Genius of Charles Darwin part II
If I stood here [Kenya] and held my mother’s hand, and she held her mother’s hand, and she held her mother’s hand – and so on back to the grand ancestor of all humans and all chimpanzees – how far would the line stretch? The answer is about three hundred miles. ibid.
I feel strongly that the barbarism that was the culmination of eugenics in the twentieth century was atrocious. But it is important to say that eugenics is not Darwinism. Eugenics is not a version of natural selection. Hitler, despite popular legend, was not a Darwinist. Every farmer, horticulturalist or pigeon-fancier knew how to breed for desired outcomes. Eugenicists like Hitler borrowed from breeders. What Darwin uniquely realised is that Nature can play the role of breeder. Darwin has been wrongly tainted. I’ve always hated how Darwin is wheeled out to justify cut-throat business competition, racism and right-wing politics. And throughout my career I’ve grappled with the apparent paradox of the way cooperation, being nice to each other, even morality, could evolve from the mindless brutality of Nature. ibid.
Evolution is a fact. It’s documented by science to the same degree Napoleon is by history. Some things are true. They are not a matter of choice or opinion, but you’d never guess that in the place where this matters more than anywhere – in our schools, where the teaching of evolution has become a hugely sensitive issue for science teachers. Richard Dawkins, The Genius of Charles Darwin III
There’s no doubt that people do find a Darwinian view of life bleak and unsympathetic. But it’s still true, and we can’t get away from that. And further, in any case, there is a sort of happiness, there’s a sort of bliss, in understanding the elegance with which the world is put together. And Darwinian Natural Selection is a supremely elegant idea; it really does make everything fall into place and make sense. And I find great consolation, great happiness, in that level of understanding. ibid.
Science offers the best answers to the meaning of life. Science offers the privilege of understanding before you die why you were ever born in the first place. Richard Dawkins
They are in you and in me; they created us, ‘body and mind’ and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence ... they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene ch2
The eminent astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle has pointed out that it’s just about as unlikely that any complex living structure could spring into existence suddenly by luck alone. He said it’s rather like taking a junkyard and letting a hurricane blow through it and the hurricane has the luck to spontaneously assemble the Boeing 747. Richard Dawkins, lecture 3 Climbing Mount Improbable
Evolution escapes the taint of miracle, escapes the taint of impossibly long odds. By the simple but hugely effective trick of smearing out the luck, smearing it out over the vastness of geological time. ibid.
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved literally out of nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale
I think perhaps the single most convincing fact, observation, you could point to would be the pattern of resemblances that you see when you compare the genes using modern DNA techniques ... of any pair of animals you like, a pair of animals, a pair of planets. And then plot out the resemblances and the form a perfect hierarchy, a perfect family tree. And the only alternative to it being a family tree is that the intelligent designer deliberately set out to deceive us in the most underhand and devious manner. Richard Dawkins, Berkeley California
It’s worse than that: the argument for God starts by assuming what it is attempting to explain – intelligence, complexity, it comes to the same thing – and so it explains nothing. God is a non-explanation. Whereas evolution by natural selection [is] an explanation. It really does start simply and become complex. Richard Dawkins, interview Sunday Telegraph 26th September 1999
Evolution should be one of the first things you learn at school ... and what do they get instead? Sacred hearts and incense. Shallow, empty religion. 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
Because it’s an archipelago, because the islands are within reach, it is a recipe for division of species. Every now and again one or two finches gets blown across, because that happens rather seldom, there’s time for it to evolve in a different way on the new island. Richard Dawkins, interview Darwin’s Brave New World
The fact of evolution is uncontroversial ... There is a massive amount of evidence. Richard Dawkins, interviewing Wendy Richards, Concerned Women for America
To think that the idea of God intervening in this conjuring trick way is blasphemous. ibid.
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, PBS 2009