Darwin gives courage to the rest of science that we shall end up understanding literally everything, springing from almost nothing – a thought extremely hard to comprehend and believe.
Evolution has been observed. It’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening.
What’s wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?
I might respect you as a brilliant intellect, runner, musician or juggler. But respect your BELIEFS? Only if they’re supported by evidence.
We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can’t disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can’t disprove, we can say that God is very, very improbable.
I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.
Being an atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily, and fully.
Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.
If you don’t know anything about computers, just remember that they are machines that do exactly what you tell them but often surprise you in the result.
Discrimination is not liberal. Arguing against discrimination is not intolerance.
You contain a trillion copies of a large, textual document written in a highly accurate, digital code, each copy as voluminous as a substantial book. I’m talking, of course, of the DNA in your cells.
No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth.
It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that if Darwinism was really a theory of chance, it could not work.
The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No other theory that has ever been suggested is in principle capable of explaining life.
Beliefs. Once entrenched in a culture, they persist, evolve and diverge, in a manner reminiscent of biological evolution.
Having a debate with a modern Christian is like punching a sponge.
Writing a computer virus program is child’s play. Any fool can do it, which is why the silly little twerps who do have nothing to be proud of.
If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.
If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible.
If we want to know where the truth lies in particular cases, we have to look.