Unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop being true.
In the beginning was simplicity.
Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it?
The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened.
Being dead will be no different from being unborn – I shall be just as I was in the time of William the Conqueror or the dinosaurs or the trilobites. There is nothing to fear in that.
I great difficulty having any respect for a religion that has so little confidence in the truth of its beliefs that it feels reduced to using threats in order to propagate those beliefs.
If you divide Christians into denominations, agnostics and atheists come in third, behind Catholics and Baptists. That’s interesting when you contrast it with the lack of influence of nonbelievers.
There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent.
Any altruistic system is inherently unstable, because it is open to abuse by selfish individuals, ready to exploit it.
We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
Gravity is not a version of the truth. It is the truth. Anyone who doubts it is invited to jump out a tenth-storey window.
Religion is not the root of all evil, for no one thing is the root of all anything.
It is all too easy to mistake passion that can change its mind for fundamentalism, which never will.
Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.
When I say that human beings are just gene machines, one shouldn’t put too much emphasis on the word ‘just.’ There is a very great deal of complication, and indeed beauty in being a gene machine.
Segregation has no place in the education system.
The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.
At least the fundamentalists haven’t tried to dilute their message. Their faith is exposed for what it is for all to see.
I’m a cultural Christian in the same way many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims.
I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.