When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet I ii 90-91, Romeo to Benvolio
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
What damned error but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice III ii 74-80, Bassiano to self
But now the Bishop
Turns insurrection to religion.
Supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts,
He’s followed both with body and with mind ...
Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause. William Shakespeare, II Henry IV I i 199-202 & 205, Morton to Lord Bardolph
My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a ‘they’ as opposed to a ‘we’ can be identified at all. Richard Dawkins, The Devil’s Chaplain
If you ask the question, ‘What is the survival value of religious belief?’ it could be that you’re asking the wrong question. What you should be doing is asking, ‘What’s the survival value for the kind of brain which manifests itself as religious belief?’ Richard Dawkins, interview Horizon: God on the Brain, BBC 2003
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. Richard Dawkins
Religions do make claims about the universe – the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they’re usually false. Richard Dawkins
It’s presumptive and abusive to label a child with the religion of its parents. Richard Dawkins v Alister McGrath, debate Oxford Literary Festival 2007
It’s a simple fallacy to say oh well if there are limits to science there must be something to fill that gap – and what else could there be but religion. That is just not logical. ibid.
What on earth makes you trust religion to tell you what’s right and wrong? If you do trust religion, where are you going to get it from? For goodness sake don’t get it from the Bible. ibid.
I suppose religiosity includes things like a love of ritual and a love of going to Church and things like that. I’m not much interested. ibid.
There’s even a sense in which being clear sounds aggressive. There’s a certain kind of mind to whom clarity is if not offensive kind of threatening. Now religion is a very special case because religion has become accustomed to being treated as a kind of privileged, favoured child who never gets scolded, never has to stand up to the sort of ordinary criticism any other field like politics does. Richard Dawkins, interviewing P Z Myers 2008
There are would-be murderers all round the world who want to kill you and me and themselves because they’re motivated by what they think is the highest ideal ... The elephant in the room: an elephant called Religion. The suicide bomber is convinced that in killing for his God, he will be fast-tracked to a special martyr’s heaven. Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil? The God Delusion, Channel 4 2006
The process of non-thinking called faith. I’m a scientist and I believe there is a profound contradiction between science and religious belief. There is no well demonstrated reason to believe in God. And I think the idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe. ibid.
Religious faith discourages independent thought, it’s divisive and it’s dangerous. ibid.
The comfort it provides is a shallow pretence. ibid.
People like to say that faith and science can live together side by side, but I don’t think they can. They’re deeply opposed. Science is a discipline of investigation and constructive doubt, questing with logic, evidence and reason to draw conclusions; faith by stark contrast demands a positive suspension of critical faculties. Science proceeds by setting up hypotheses, ideas or models and then attempts to disprove them, so a scientist is constantly asking questions, being sceptical. Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time. ibid.
Science is about testing, comparing and corroborating this mass of evidence, and using it to update old theories of how things work. ibid.
Evangelicals like Haggard are foisting evidence falsehoods on their flock. The evangelicals are denying scientific evidence just to support bronze-age myths. ibid.
Fundamentalist Christianity is on the rise among the electorate of the world’s only superpower, right up to and including the president ... Fundamentalist American Christianity is attacking science, but what is it offering instead? A mirror-image of Islamic extremism: an American Taliban. ibid.
How do we explain the mysteries of life? Science has steadily overturned old religious myths about how all this came to be. Yet those who adhere to Judaism, Christianity or Islam still prefer to ignore reason, and have faith in their for ever unprovable omniscient creator. I had thought science was rolling back religious belief but I was wrong. Far from being beaten, militant faith is on the march all across the world with terrifying consequences. As a scientist I am increasingly worried about how Faith is undermining Science; it’s something we must resist. Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil? The Virus of Faith
Faith acts like a virus that attacks the young and infects generation after generation. ibid.
What in the twenty-first century are we doing venerating a book that contains such stuff? ibid.
These innocent children are being saddled with demonstrable falsehoods. ibid.
When it comes to children I think of religion as a dangerous virus. It’s a virus which is transmitted partly through teachers and clergy but also down through the generations from parent to child to grandchild. Children are especially vulnerable to the virus of religion. ibid.
For many people part of growing up is killing off the virus of faith with a good strong dose of rational thinking, but if an individual doesn’t succeed in shaking it off, his mind is stuck in a permanent state of infancy and there is a real danger that he will infect the next generation. ibid.
If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them? Who is God trying to impress? ibid.
They half-believe in the Bible. But how do they decide which parts to believe literally and which parts are allegorical? ibid.
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. ibid.
Isn’t it a remarkable coincidence? Almost everyone has the same religion as their parents. And it always just happens to be the right religion. Richard Dawkins, lecture Berkeley University 2008
Religion debauches education. Richard Dawkins, with Christopher Hitchens & A C Grayling v Spivey & Neuburger & Scruton
Religion has become accustomed to a level of respect that is not accorded to any other belief system. Richard Dawkins, interview BBC Hardtalk
Our brains are in some sense predisposed to be religious. ibid.
The scientific world view is so much more exciting, more poetic, more filled with sheer wonder than anything in the poverty stricken arsenals of the religious imagination. Richard Dawkins, lecture An Atheist’s Call to Arms
The elegance of Darwinism is corrosive to religion precisely because it is so elegant, so parsimonious, so powerful, so economically powerful. ibid.
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. Richard Dawkins, interview Have Your Say
It’s funny the way one uses words like insult and offence but only for religion ... You don’t have to feel insulted or offended unless of course you haven’t got an argument in reply. Richard Dawkins, interview Newstalk 20th September 2009
It’s been pointed out that if you were the only person who held those beliefs you’d probably be locked up in an asylum. But because lots of people hold them it becomes a sort of respectable accepted thing. Richard Dawkins, interviewing Ian McEwan
Jefferson and Washington and their colleagues were deists or atheists but what they were passionate about is that American having been founded by immigrants fleeing religious persecution should never have to undergo with that again. And the only way they could achieve that was by setting up a secular state with no state religion. They must be spinning in their graves at what is happening in America today which is rapidly degenerating into a theocracy. ibid.
What I said was that teaching children that they will roast in Hell could under some circumstances be worse than physical abuse, in the sense that it may last longer. Richard Dawkins, In Confidence 2010
Because religion is separated from the state in America religion has become free enterprise. ibid.
A whole kind of eco-system of memes. ibid.