Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that’s because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.
It has been convincingly demonstrated that countries where there are high rates of poverty, or high rates of economic inequality, are the countries with the highest rates of religious beliefs.
Do you really mean the only reason you try to be good is to gain God’s approval and reward? That’s not morality, that’s just sucking up.
The deceitful misquoting of scientists to suit an anti-scientific agenda ranks among the many unchristian habits of fundamentalist authors.
What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading.
Don’t ask God to cure cancer and world poverty. He’s too busy finding you a parking space and fixing the weather for your barbecue.
I hate the neologism “owned” for “scored a victory over”. I have no intention of owning anyone, and nobody will ever own me.
There are people in the world who desperately want not to have to believe in Darwinism .
Evolution normally does not come to a halt, but constantly ‘tracks’ the changing environment.
If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope to eventually understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.
I am not absolutely positive there is no god. Only in the sense that I’m not absolutely positive there is no large china teapot in orbit in the solar system.
Organizing atheists is a bit like herding cats; They are on the whole too intelligent and independent minded to lend themselves to being herded.
Science is interesting, and if you don’t agree, you can f**k off.
The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to save the creation theory is to assume that God deliberately planted enormous quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened.
All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.
Let us understand Darwinism so we can walk in the opposite direction when it comes to setting up society.
They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.
The idea of tiny changes cumulated over many steps is an immensely powerful idea, capable of explaining an enormous range of things that would be otherwise inexplicable.
Society bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities. If I say something offensive to religious people, I’ll be universally censured, including by many atheists.
Our subjective judgment of what seems like a good bet is irrelevant to what is actually a good bet.