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.
We don’t need fossils – the case for evolution is watertight without them; so it is paradoxical to use gaps in the fossil record as though they were evidence against evolution.
There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents.
How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.
The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.
It is a remarkable coincidence that almost everyone has the same religion as their parents and it always just so happens they’re the right religion.
The idea of an afterlife where you can be reunited with loved ones can be immensely consoling – though not to me.
Why, I can’t help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself.
Isn’t it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?
Blasphemy is a Victimless Crime.
Natural selection is anything but random.