My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.
The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America.
Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.
Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.
The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable.
Even those who do not, or cannot, avail themselves of a scientific education, choose to benefit from the technology that is made possible by the scientific education of others.
A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.
My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.
There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can’t prove that there aren’t any, so shouldn’t we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.
The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun.
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think...
Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change His future mind?
We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.
The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.
The truth is more magical – in the best and most exciting sense of the word – than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.