I don’t feel depressed. I feel elated.
Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that.
The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.
The universe doesn’t owe us condolence or consolation; it doesn’t owe us a nice warm feeling inside.
Evolution never looks to the future.
What you cannot have is a gene that sacrifices itself for the benefit of other genes. What you can have is a gene that makes organisms sacrifice themselves for other organisms under the influence of selfish genes.
I think we certainly benefit from social institutions which encourage us towards moral behavior. It’s very important to have law. It’s very important to have a moral education.
If I were God wanting to make a human being, I would do it by a more direct way rather than by evolution. Why deliberately set it up in the one way which makes it look as though you don’t exist?
I don’t understand why so many people who are sophisticated in science go on believing in God. I wish I did.
It’s known that stress gives rise to disease. It’s also known that many diseases, especially stress-related diseases, can be cured by placebos – pills that have no medicinal effect, but people think they do, and so they do.
If we say that religion is a virus, then why isn’t science a virus?
My computer is a very complex gadget and it was designed by many designers, so why must the universe have only a single designer and not many designers?
Religion is a powerful weapon that can be used because it persuades people to do things. And thus it can be used for good or ill. But it should not be a powerful weapon at all.
When we talk about genes for anything, like a gene for being gay or a gene for being aggressive or something of that sort, that a gene for anything may not have been a gene for that thing under different environmental conditions.
There are very interesting controversies within evolution; however, whether evolution occurs is not one of them. It definitely does.
Science is wonderful, science is important, and so are children, so are young people, and so what could be better than to write a science book for young people?
The fear of Hell is a very powerful motivation.
You can’t blame science for being used for evil purposes. What you can do is say, ‘This is an exceedingly powerful tool.’ And you want to make sure it is used for good purposes, not bad ones. That is a political decision.
We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don’t think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we’re forever condemned to be irrational.
You can never be absolutely certain that anything doesn’t exist. But you can show that it’s unlikely.