Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
I don’t want to sound callous. I mean, even if I have nothing to offer, that doesn’t matter, because that still doesn’t mean that what anybody else has to offer therefore has to be true.
I’ve been reading an Alabama newspaper that one man shot another man because he beat him in a Bible-quoting competition.
For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.
Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will tend to be hard for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, the chances are that you won’t know it, and may even vigorously deny it.
What has ‘theology’ ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has ‘theology’ ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?
Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.
You cannot be both sane and well educated and disbelieve in evolution. The evidence is so strong that any sane, educated person has got to believe in evolution.
Something pretty mysterious had to give rise to the origin of the universe.
Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
It’s an important point to realize that the genetic programming of our lives is not fully deterministic. It is statistical – it is in any animal merely statistical – not deterministic.
Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.
Atheists are the new gays; in the closet and pretty much disqualified from public office.
All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.
Offense is what people take when they can’t take argument.
In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it’s got the wrong answers.
The solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle.
Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops.
We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realize that we are apes.