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250. I care passionately about the question whether there is a supernatural designer in the universe. (God & Creationism & Intelligent Design) Professor Richard Dawkins, interviewing P Z Myers 2008
2,644. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. (Science & Universe & Intelligent Design & Creationism & Anthropic Principle) Richard Dawkins
53,048. Te theory of natural selection was his greatest contribution ... How the fantastically complicated illusion of design that living creatures have could have been produced ... by an automatic undersigned unplanned process. (Darwin & Evolution & Creationism & Intelligent Design) Richard Dawkins, Radio Ulster, 2008
5,681. 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. (Evolution & Creationism & Intelligent Design & Analogy) Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, Horizon, BBC 1987
5,682. 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. (Evolution & Creationism & Intelligent Design & Analogy) ibid.
5,683. 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. (Evolution & Creationism & Intelligent Design) ibid.
5,684. 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. (Evolution & Creationism & Intelligent Design & Analogy) Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker 1986 ch1
5,687. 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. (Evolution & Creationism & Intelligent Design & Darwin) Richard Dawkins, God Strikes Back: The Genius of Charles Darwin, Channel 4 2008
5,697. 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. (Evolution & Creationism & Intelligent Design & Analogy) Richard Dawkins, lecture 3 Climbing Mount Improbable, 1991
5,703. 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? (Evolution & Life & Creationism & Intelligent Design & Darwin) Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil? The God Delusion, Channel 4 2006
5,707. 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. (Evolution & Creationism & Intelligent Design & Analogy & Watch) Richard Dawkins, Why We Are Here
53,161. What this does to Science is it wastes a lot of time of scientists who could be getting on with their work. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) Richard Dawkins, interview Horizon: A War on Science, BBC 2006
53,162. When one says that in America Intelligent Design is getting a hold – it is not getting a hold in the scientific community, in the intellectual community. It is getting a hold only among those parts of the population who don’t know anything. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) ibid.
53,163. Design needs to postulate an entity as least as complicated, at least as high information content, at least as irreducibly complex, as that which it is supposed to explain. It is therefore a total lack of explanation. It doesn’t explain anything because it can’t explain itself. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) ibid.
53,164. Intelligent Design explains precisely zero. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) ibid.
53,165. 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. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) Richard Dawkins, Times online article 19th July 2008
53,166. 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. (Creationism & Intelligent Design & Evolution & Meaning of Life & Luck & Cruelty & Starvation & Suffering) Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
53,215. It’s enormously damaging if the world’s leading economic power was subverted and undermined by this kind of anti-scientific tendency. Richard Dawkins
53,216. Intelligent design explains exactly nothing. Richard Dawkins
53,217. Intelligent design is not an argument of the same character as these [evolutionary science] controversies. It is not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one. It might be worth discussing in a class on the history of ideas, in a philosophy class on popular logical fallacies, or in a comparative religion class on origin myths from around the world. But it no more belongs in a biology class than alchemy belongs in a chemistry class, phlogiston in a physics class or the stork theory in a sex education class. In those cases, the demand for equal time for ‘both theories’ would be ludicrous. Similarly, in a class on 20th-century European history, who would demand equal time for the theory that the Holocaust never happened? Richard Dawkins & Jerry Coyne, The Guardian article 1st September 2005 ‘One Side Can Be Wrong’
5,717. The Blind Watchmaker – which would set the stage for his role as a defender of science against the claims of Creationists. (Evolution & Science & Creationism & Intelligent Design) Beautiful Minds: Professor Richard Dawkins
53,168. 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. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) Richard Dawkins, lecture Berkeley University 2008
95,708. Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative ... And it is not only a workable solution, it is a solution of stunning elegance and power. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
53,169. Preposterous mind-tricking falsehood. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) ibid.
95,846. This pattern of major design flaws, compensated for by subsequent tinkering, is exactly what we should not expect if there really were a designer at work. We might expect unfortunate mistakes, as in the spherical aberration of the Hubble mirror, but we do not expect obvious stupidity, as in the retina being installed back to front. ibid. p356
95,851. The cheetah, if we are going to talk design at all, is superbly equipped to escape from those very same cheetahs. For heaven’s sake, who side is the designer on? When you look at the cheetah’s taut muscles and flexing backbone, you must conclude that the designer wants the cheetah to win the race. But when you look at the sprinting, jinking, dodging gazelle, you reach exactly the opposite conclusion. Does the designer’s left hand not know what his right hand is doing? Is he a sadist, who enjoys the spectator sport and is forever upping the ante on both sides to increase the thrill of the chase? (Evolution & Intelligent Design) ibid. p384
53,171. 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. (Creationism & Intelligent Design) Richard Dawkins, lecture An Atheist’s Call to Arms
53,173. 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. (Evolution & Intelligent Design) Richard Dawkins, Berkeley California