However Statistically Improbable The Entity You Seek To Explain By Invoking A Designer, The Designer Himself Has Got To Be At Least As Improbable. God Is The Ultimate Boeing 747

-Richard Dawkins

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However Statistically Improbable The

Richard Dawkins

However Statistically Improbable The Entity You Seek To Explain By Invoking A Designer, The Designer Himself Has Got To Be At Least As Improbable. God Is The Ultimate Boeing 747

Topic

Boeing

Designer

Entity

More From Richard Dawkins

There Is No Such Thing As A Christian Child: Only A Child Of Christian Parents.

Christian

Children

Parent

My Untidy Habits Drive Me To Follow The Slash-and-burn Principle. Work On A Virgin Table Until The Mess Becomes Unbearable, Then Move On To A Clean Table In A Clean Room - Or, On A Beautiful Summer Day Like This, One Of The Five Tables Dotted Around The Garden. Trash That Table And Move On Again.

Beautiful

Summer

Moving

I Shall Not Make An Argument Ad Hominem. My Argument Is Ad Bullshitem.

Argument

Ads

I Think I Would Abolish Schools Which Systematically Inculcate Sectarian Beliefs.

School

Thinking

Belief

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.

Society

Principles

Theory

It Is Universally Accepted That An Admission Of Atheism Would Be Instant Political Suicide For Any (u.s.) Presidential Candidate.

Suicide

Presidential

Political

If Circumcision Has Any Justification At All, It Should Be Medical Only. Parents' Religion Is The Worst Of All Reasons - Pure Child Abuse.

Atheist

Children

Parent

Evolution Has Been Observed. It's Just That It Hasn't Been Observed While It's Happening.

Evolution

Has Beens

Happenings

Religion Has Been A Powerful Weapon In The Hands Of Governments, In The Hands Of Priests, In The Hands Of Kings Who Have Used It As A Weapon To Keep Down The Populace. It Is A Wonderful Way Of Disciplining People And Making Them Do What You Want, To Tell Them That If They Don't Do What You Want They Will, For Example, Go To Hell.

Kings

Powerful

Government

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.

Cells

Brain

Mind

The Deceitful Misquoting Of Scientists To Suit An Anti-scientific Agenda Ranks Among The Many Unchristian Habits Of Fundamentalist Authors.

Agendas

Suits

Scientist

You Can't Even Begin To Understand Biology, You Can't Understand Life, Unless You Understand What It's All There For, How It Arose - And That Means Evolution.

Mean

Evolution

Biology

It's Known That Stress Gives Rise To Disease. It's Also Known That Many Diseases, Especially Stress-related Diseases, Can Be Cured By Placebos - Pills That Have No Medicinal Effect, But People Think They Do, And So They Do.

Stress

Thinking

People

All Animals Are Minor Variations On A Very Particular Theme.

Animal

Variation

Theme

Be Thankful That You Have A Life, And Forsake Your Vain And Presumptuous Desire For A Second One.

Death

Spiritual

Religious

The Less You Think, The More You Believe.

Believe

Thinking

Doubt

Textbooks Describe Dna As A Blueprint For A Body. It's Better Seen As A Recipe For Making A Body, Because It Is Irreversible. But Today I Want To Present It As Something Different Again, And Even More Intriguing. The Dna In You Is A Coded Description Of Ancient Worlds In Which Your Ancestors Lived. Dna Is The Wisdom Out Of The Old Days, And I Mean Very Old Days Indeed.

Wisdom

Mean

Dna

Religion Is The Most Inflammatory Enemy-labelling Device In History.

Enemy

Devices

Thus The Creationist's Favourite Question "what Is The Use Of Half An Eye?" Actually, This Is A Lightweight Question, A Doddle To Answer. Half An Eye Is Just 1 Per Cent Better Than 49 Per Cent Of An Eye.

Eye

Answers

Half

I Read In The Paper Today The List Of The Most Popular Boys' Names In Britain. The First Was Jack, The Second Was Mohammed. That Makes Me Feel A Little Bit Worried.

Boys

Names

Firsts

There May Be Some Deep Questions About The Cosmos That Are Forever Beyond Science. The Mistake Is To Think They Are Therefore Not Beyond Religion Too.

Mistake

Thinking

Forever

There's No Point Of Having Faith If You Have Evidence.

Faith

Belief

Evidence

The So-called Sophisticated Theologians, Especially Ones Who Are Very Nice, Like Rowan Williams And Jonathan Sacks, You Sometimes Don't Quite Know Where You Are With Them. You Feel That When You Attack Them, You're Attacking A Wet Sponge.

Nice

Sometimes

Sophisticated

Such A Bandwidth! God, Who May Not Have A Brain Made Of Neurons, Or A Cpu Made Of Silicon, But If He Has The Powers Attributed To Him He Must Have Something Far More Elaborately And Non-randomly Constructed Than The Largest Brain Or The Largest Computer We Know.

Brain

Neurons

May

Religion Is The Root Of Quite A Lot Of Evil.

Roots

Evil

Religion

The Universe Doesn't Owe You A Sense Of Hope

Universe

We Need A Name For The New Replicator, A Noun That Conveys The Idea Of A Unit Of Cultural Transmission, Or A Unit Of Imitation. 'mimeme' Comes From A Suitable Greek Root, But I Want A Monosyllable That Sounds A Bit Like 'gene'. I Hope My Classicist Friends Will Forgive Me If I Abbreviate Mimeme To Meme. If It Is Any Consolation, It Could Alternatively Be Thought Of As Being Related To 'memory', Or To The French Word Même. It Should Be Pronounced To Rhyme With 'cream'.

Memories

Science

Names

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.

Mean

Sound

Want

The Very Idea That We Get A Moral Compass From Religion Is Horrible. Not Only Should We Not Get Our Moral Compass From Religion, As A Matter Of Fact We Don't.

Ideas

Matter

Facts

Certainly I See The Scientific View Of The World As Incompatible With Religion, But That Is Not What Is Interesting About It. It Is Also Incompatible With Magic, But That Also Is Not Worth Stressing. 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.

Atheist

Stress

Views

What Is The Purpose Of The Universe?" Is A Silly Question.

Silly

Purpose

Universe

Leaders Who Forbid Their Followers To Use Effective Contraceptive Methods Express A Preference For "natural" Methods Of Population Limitation, And A Natural Method Is Exactly What They Are Going To Get. It Is Called Starvation.

Leader

Population

Followers

[jay] Gould Sets Up An Artificial Wall Between The Two Worldviews That Doesn't Exist In My Life.

Wall

Two

Jay Gould

We Have Seen That Living Things Are Too Improbable And Too Beautifully 'designed' To Have Come Into Existence By Chance.

Chance

Existence

Living Things

If You Have A Faith, It Is Statistically Overwhelmingly Likely That It Is The Same Faith As Your Parents And Grandparents Had. 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. The Convictions That You So Passionately Believe Would Have Been A Completely Different, And Largely Contradictory, Set Of Convictions, If Only You Had Happened To Be Born In A Different Place.

Atheist

Believe

Moving

When We Talk About Genes For Anything, Like A Gene For Being Gay Or A Gene For Being Aggressive Or Something Of That Sort, That A Gene For Anything May Not Have Been A Gene For That Thing Under Different Environmental Conditions.

Gay

Environmental

Different

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.

Flying

Monsters

Fantasy

We Are Going To Die, And That Makes Us The Lucky Ones. Most People Are Never Going To Die, Because They Are Never Going To Be Born. The Number Of People Who Could Be Here, In My Place, Out Number The Sand Grains In The Sahara. If You Think About All The Different Ways In Which Our Genes Could Be Permuted, You And I Are Quite Grotesquely Lucky To Be Here. The Number Of Events That Had To Happen In Order For You To Exist, In Order For Me To Exist... We Are Privileged To Be Alive And Nd We Should Make The Most Of Our Time On This World.

Inspirational

Thinking

Numbers

Design Cannot Precede Evolution And Therefore Cannot Underlie The Universe.

Design

Evolution

Universe

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.

Children

Silly

Writing

Faith Is Not The Opposite Of Reason.

Opposites

Reason

The Moral Law Is A Reason To Think Of God As Plausible - Not Just A God Who Sets The Universe In Motion But A God Who Cares About Human Beings, Because We Seem Uniquely Amongst Creatures On The Planet To Have This Far-developed Sense Of Morality.

Thinking

Law

Who Cares

A Gene Might Be Able To Assist Replicas Of Itself That Are Sitting In Other Bodies. If So, This Would Appear As Individual Altruism But It Would Be Brought About By Gene Selfishness.

Selfishness

Would Be

Sitting

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.

Religious

Atheist

People

I Have Often Said That I Am A Passionate Darwinian When It Comes To Explaining Why We Exist.

Passionate

Said

Explaining

We Have This One Life, Let's Enjoy It, Let's Live It To The Full And Don't Get So Worked Up About Don't Identify Yourself So Passionately With This Business Called Religion.

Enjoy

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.

Animal

Important

Realizing

I Do Object To The Assumption That Anything That Might Be Outside Of Nature Is Ruled Out Of The Conversation. That's An Impoverished View Of The Kinds Of Questions We Humans Can Ask, Such As "why Am I Here?", "what Happens After We Die?", "is There A God?" If You Refuse To Acknowledge Their Appropriateness, You End Up With A Zero Probability Of God After Examining The Natural World Because It Doesn't Convince You On A Proof Basis.

Zero

Views

World

The List Of Things About Which We Strictly Have To Be Agnostic Doesn't Stop At Tooth Fairies And Celestial Teapots. It Is Infinite. If You Want To Believe In A Particular One Of Them - Teapots, Unicorns, Or Tooth Fairies, Thor Or Yahweh - The Onus Is On You To Say Why You Believe In It. The Onus Is Not On The Rest Of Us To Say Why We Do Not. We Who Are Atheists Are Also A-fairyists, A-teapotists, And A-unicornists, But We Don't Have To Bother Saying So.

Atheist

Believe

Want

I Mean It As A Compliment When I Say That You Could Almost Define A Philosopher As Someone Who Won't Take Common Sense For An Answer.

Mean

Common Sense

Answers

Science Offers Us An Explanation Of How Complexity (the Difficult) Arose Out Of Simplicity (the Easy). The Hypothesis Of God Offers No Worthwhile Explanation For Anything, For It Simply Postulates What We Are Trying To Explain. It Postulates The Difficult To Explain, And Leaves It At That.

Simplicity

Trying

Easy

So Occam's Razor - Occam Says You Should Choose The Explanation That Is Most Simple And Straightforward - Leads Me More To Believe In God Than In The Multiverse, Which Seems Quite A Stretch Of The Imagination.

Believe

Simple

Imagination

Most People Are Never Going To Die Because They Are Never Going To Be Born

People

Sahara

Evolution

Natural Selection Is All About The Differential Success Of Rival Dna In Getting Itself Transmitted Vertically In The Species Archives.

Dna

Archives

Rivals

Not Only Is Science Corrosive To Religion, But Religion Is Corrosive To Science. It Teaches People To Be Satisfied With Trivial Non-explanations And Blinds Them To The Wonderful Real Explanations That We Have Within Our Grasp.

Real

People

Religion

It Is An Essential Part Of The Scientific Enterprise To Admit Ignorance, Even To Exult In Ignorance As A Challenge To Future Conquests.

Ignorance

Challenges

Essentials

Blasphemy Is A Victimless Crime.

Crime

Blasphemy

We Are Digital Archives Of The African Pliocene, Even Of Devonian Seas; Walking Repositories Of Wisdom Out Of The Old Days. You Could Spend A Lifetime Reading In This Ancient Library And Die Unsated By The Wonder Of It.

Reading

Sea

Library

I'm A Sucker For Nice Religious Leaders. I Fall For It Every Time.

Religious

Nice

Fall

Evolution Is Fundamentally Hostile To Religion.

Evolution

Hostile

Mutation Is Random; Natural Selection Is The Very Opposite Of Random.

Selfish

Opposites

Society

Life Results From The Non-random Survival Of Randomly Varying Replicators. The Watchmaker Is Blind

Survival

Evolution

Blind

If You Are In The Camp I Am, One Place Where Science And Faith Could Touch Each Other Is In The Investigation Of Supposedly Miraculous Events.

Events

Investigation

Camps

Who Will Say With Confidence That Sexual Abuse Is More Permanently Damaging To Children Than Threatening Them With The Eternal And Unquenchable Fires Of Hell?

Children

Fire

Abuse

The Idea Of A Divine Creator Belittles The Elegant Reality Of The Universe.

Reality

Ideas

Divine

The Question Of Whether There Exists A Supernatural Creator, A God, Is One Of The Most Important That We Have To Answer. I Think That It Is A Scientific Question. My Answer Is No.

Thinking

Important

Answers

Although Atheism Might Have Been Logically Tenable Before Darwin, Darwin Made It Possible To Be An Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist.

Atheist

Religion

Atheism

If You Are Religious At All, It Is Overwhelmingly Probable That Your Religion Is That Of Your Parents. If You Were Born In Arkansas And You Think Christianity Is True And Islam False (knowing Full Well That You Would Think The Opposite If You Had Been Born In Afghanistan), You Are The Victim Of Childhood Indoctrination.

Religious

Thinking

Opposites

The Chicken Is Only An Egg’s Way For Making Another Egg.

Eggs

Way

Chickens

This Person Should Have Been Aborted Years Ago.

Should Have

Years

Persons

The Messages That Dna Molecules Contain Are All But Eternal When Seen Against The Time Scale Of Individual Lifetimes. The Lifetimes Of Dna Messages Give Or Take A Few Mutations Are Measured In Units Ranging From Millions Of Years To Hundreds Of Millions Of Years; Or, In Other Words, Ranging From 10,000 Individual Lifetimes To A Trillion Individual Lifetimes. Each Individual Organism Should Be Seen As A Temporary Vehicle, In Which Dna Messages Spend A Tiny Fraction Of Their Geological Lifetimes.

Dna

Years

Giving

So It Is Best To Keep An Open Mind And Be Agnostic. At First Sight That Seems An Unassailable Position, At Least In The Weak Sense Of Pascal's Wager. But On Second Thoughts It Seems A Cop-out, Because The Same Could Be Said Of Father Christmas And Tooth Fairies. 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?

Atheist

Father

Science

We Are Going To Die, And That Makes Us The Lucky Ones. Most People Are Never Going To Die Because They Are Never Going To Be Born. The Potential People Who Could Have Been Here In My Place But Who Will In Fact Never See The Light Of Day Outnumber The Sand Grains Of Sahara.

Light

People

Lucky

Myths Are Fun, As Long As You Don't Confuse Them With The Truth.

Fun

Long

Mythology

‎"matter Flows From Place To Place, And Momentarily Comes Together To Be You. Some People Find That Thought Disturbing; I Find The Reality Thrilling.

Reality

People

Religion

Gravity Is Not A Version Of The Truth. It Is The Truth. Anyone Who Doubts It Is Invited To Jump Out A Tenth-storey Window.

Doubt

Window

Gravity

But What, After All, Is Faith? It Is A State Of Mind That Leads People To Believe Something - It Doesn't Matter What - In The Total Absence Of Supporting Evidence. If There Were Good Supporting Evidence Then Faith Would Be Superfluous, For The Evidence Would Compel Us To Believe It Anyway. It Is This That Makes The Often-parroted Claim That 'evolution Itself Is A Matter Of Faith' So Silly. People Believe In Evolution Not Because They Arbitrarily Want To Believe It But Because Of Overwhelming, Publicly Available Evidence.

Believe

Silly

People

Atheists Are The New Gays; In The Closet And Pretty Much Disqualified From Public Office.

Atheist

Gay

Office

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.

Suicide

Children

Thinking

It Sounds Superficially Fair. But It Presupposes That That There Is Something In Christian Theology To Be Ignorant About. The Entire Thrust Of My Position Is That Christian Theology Is A Non-subject. It Is Empty. Vacuous. Devoid Of Coherence Or Content. I Imagine That Mcgrath Would Join Me In Expressing Disbelief In Fairies, Astrology And Thor's Hammer. How Would He Respond If A Fairyologist, Astrologer Or Viking Accused Him Of Ignorance Of Their Respective Subjects?

Christian

Ignorance

Astrology

The Illusion Of Design Is So Successful That To This Day Most Americans (including, Significantly, Many Influential And Rich Americans) Stubbornly Refuse To Believe It Is An Illusion.

Believe

Successful

Design

By All Means Let's Be Open-minded, But Not So Open-minded That Our Brains Drop Out. -this Quote Is Actually Found In Carl Sagan's Book The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark, Where He Attributes It To Engineer James Oberg, Who Says He Stole It From Someone Else.

Book

Mean

Dark

I Personally Would Consider It To Be An Honour To Be Fossilized.

Honour

Evolution Is A Very, Very Important Idea. It Is The Explanation For All Of Life - A Stunningly Simple, Yet Powerful Explanation. If You Think About It, Before Darwin, We Hadn't The Foggiest Idea Of How We Came Into Being. Now We Do. It's Still Such An Exciting Idea That It Is Well Worth Everybody Understanding It.

Powerful

Simple

Thinking

I Need To Learn Not To Bend Over Backwards To Be Nice To Faith-heads. Give These People An Inch And They Take A League. I Think, As I Did When I Wrote The God Delusion, That The Roman Catholic Church Is A Disgusting Institution, The Second Most Evil Religion In The World.

Nice

Thinking

People

The Resemblance Of The Signs Of The Zodiac To The Animals After Which They Are Named... Is As Unimpressive As The Predictions Of Astrologers.

Animal

Zodiac

Predictions

Let Us Understand Darwinism So We Can Walk In The Opposite Direction When It Comes To Setting Up Society.

Opposites

Walks

Settings

Imagine A Crime Series In Which, Every Week, There Is A White Suspect And A Black Suspect. And Every Week, Lo And Behold, The Black One Turns Out To Have Done It. Unpardonable, Of Course. And My Point Is That You Could Not Defend It By Saying: "but It's Only Fiction, Only Entertainment."

White

Black

Entertainment

If You Are Asking Me If My More Global Purpose Is A Battle Against Religion, It Is.

Battle

Purpose

Asking

There Is A Tendency For People To Say Evolution Is Only A Theory. That Is Inappropriate.

People

Evolution

Inappropriate

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?

Respect

Atheist

Learning

Faith Is Powerful Enough To Immunize People Against All Appeals To Pity, To Forgiveness, To Decent Human Feelings. It Even Immunizes Them Against Fear, If They Honestly Believe That A Martyr's Death Will Send Them Straight To Heaven.

Powerful

Believe

People

The Book Is True, And If Evidence Seems To Condtradict It, It Is The Evidence That Must Be Thrown Out Not The Book.

Book

Evidence

Thrown

If You're Willing To Answer Yes To A God Outside Of Nature, Then There's Nothing Inconsistent With God On Rare Occasions Choosing To Invade The Natural World In A Way That Appears Miraculous.

Answers

Rare Occasion

World

Race Does Not Come Into It. It Is Pure Religion And Culture. Something About The Cultural Tradition Of Jews Is Way, Way More Sympathetic To Science And Learning And Intellectual Pursuits Than Islam. That Would Have Been A Fair Comparison.

Race

Intellectual

Islam

I Think We Don't Do A Service To Dialogue Between Science And Faith To Characterize Sincere People By Calling Them Names. That Inspires An Even More Dug-in Position.

Thinking

Names

People

Nowadays Theologians Aren't Quite So Straightforward As Paley. They Don't Point To Complex Living Mechanisms And Say That They Are Self-evidently Designed By A Creator, Just Like A Watch. But There Is A Tendency To Point To Them And Say 'it Is Impossible To Believe' That Such Complexity, Or Such Perfection, Could Have Evolved By Natural Selection. Whenever I Read Such A Remark, I Always Feel Like Writing 'speak For Yourself' In The Margin.

Believe

Writing

Self

Even If It Were True That We Need God To Be Moral, It Would Of Course Not Make God's Existence More Likely, Merely More Desirable (many People Cannot Tell The Difference)

Differences

People

Needs

It's Very Likely That Most Mammals Have Consciousness, And Probably Birds, Too.

Bird

Mammals

Consciousness

We Have To Find Our Own Purposes In Life, Which Are Not Derived Directly From Our Scientific History.

Purpose

Purpose Of Life

All Life Evolves By The Differential Survival Of Replicating Entities.

Humanity

Survival

Entity

Mysteries Do Not Lose Their Poetry When Solved. Quite The Contrary; The Solution Often Turns Out More Beautiful Than The Puzzle And, In Any Case, When You Have Solved One Mystery You Uncover Others, Perhaps To Inspire Greater Poetry

Beautiful

Inspire

Mystery

The Universe Does Not Owe Us Meaning.

Doe

Universe

If You Look Up At The Milky Way Through The Eyes Of Carl Sagan, You Get A Feeling In Your Chest Of Something Greater Than Yourself. And It Is. But It's Not Supernatural.

Eye

Feelings

Looks

Even If Not A Single Fossil Has Ever Been Found, The Evidence From Surviving Animals Would Still Overwhelmingly Force The Conclusion That Darwin Was Right.

Animal

Fossils

Found

There Is A Whole Field Of Inquiry That Has Come Up In The Last 30 Or 40 Years - Some Call It Sociobiology Or Evolutionary Psychology - Relating To Where We Get Our Moral Sense And Why We Value The Idea Of Altruism, And Locating Both Answers In Behavioral Adaptations For The Preservation Of Our Genes.

Ideas

Years

Psychology

Faith Is The Great Cop-out, The Great Excuse To Evade The Need To Think.

Faith

Atheist

Thinking

With Respect To Those Meanings Of 'human' That Are Relevant To The Morality Of Abortion, Any Fetus Is Less Human Than An Adult Pig.

Pigs

Abortion

Adults

The Distribution Of Species On Islands And Continents Throughout The World Is Exactly What You'd Expect If Evolution Was A Fact. The Distribution Of Fossils In Space And In Time Are Exactly What You Would Expect If Evolution Were A Fact. There Are Millions Of Facts All Pointing In The Same Direction And No Facts Pointing In The Wrong Direction.

Space

Islands

Religion

Nobody Would Seriously Describe A Tiny Child As A Marxist Child Or An Anarchist Child Or A Post-modernist Child. Yet Children Are Routinely Labelled With The Religion Of Their Parents. We Need To Encourage People To Think Carefully Before Labelling Any Child Too Young To Know Their Own Opinions And Our Adverts Will Help To Do That.

Children

Thinking

People

Dna Is Rom. It Can Be Read Millions Of Times Over, But Only Written To Once - When It Is First Assembled The Birth Of The Cell In Which It Resides.

Dna

Cells

Firsts

I Was Brought Up In A Family Which Valued Natural History. Both My Parents Knew The Names Of All The British Wildflowers, So As We Went Walking The Country, I Was Constantly Being Exposed To A Natural History Sort Of Knowledge.

Country

Names

Parent

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.

Years

Justice

Mad

Superficially It's A Problem If Homosexuality Is Genetic - If The Difference Between People's Sexual Preferences Is Genetic - Because At Least A Pure Homosexual Would Be Unlikely To Reproduce And Therefore Pass On The Genes. So The First Question You Ask Is, Is It Actually Genetic, And The Answer Is Probably To Some Extent Yes.

Differences

People

Would Be

[the Internet] Is By Far The Most Important Innovation In The Media In My Lifetime. It's Like Having A Huge Encyclopedia Permanently Available. There's A Tremendous Amount Of Rubbish On The World Wide Web, But Retrieval Of What You Want To So Rapid That It Doesn't Really Matter

Media

Innovation

Important

I'm Not So Fond Of The Sort Of Science Fiction That Isn't Really Science Fiction But Is Sometimes Thought To Be - Gothic Princesses And White Horses And Bats And Castles And Things.

Horse

Princess

White

You Can Never Be Absolutely Certain That Anything Doesn't Exist. But You Can Show That It's Unlikely.

Unlikely

Certain

Shows

Bush And Bin Laden Are Really On The Same Side: The Side Of Faith And Violence Against The Side Of Reason And Discussion. Both Have Implacable Faith That They Are Right And The Other Is Evil.

Evil

Political

Violence

If God Wanted To Create Life And Create Humans, It Would Be Slightly Odd That He Should Choose The Extraordinarily Roundabout Way Of Waiting For 10 Billion Years Before Life Got Started And Then Waiting For Another 4 Billion Years Until You Got Human Beings Capable Of Worshipping And Sinning And All The Other Things Religious People Are Interested In.

Religious

Years

People

If People Think God Is Interesting, The Onus Is On Them To Show That There Is Anything There To Talk About. Otherwise They Should Just Shut Up About It.

Thinking

People

Interesting

Aquarius Is A Miscellaneous Set Of Stars All At Different Distances From Us, Which Have No Connection With Each Other Except That They Constitute A (meaningless) Pattern When Seen From A Certain (not Particularly Special) Place In The Galaxy (here).

Stars

Distance

Aquarius

I Might Respect You As A Brilliant Intellect, Runner, Musician Or Juggler. But Respect Your Beliefs? Only If They're Supported By Evidence.

Musician

Might

Belief

[jay] Gould Sets Up An Artificial Wall Between The Two Worldviews That Doesn't Exist In My Life. Because I Do Believe In God's Creative Power In Having Brought It All Into Being In The First Place, I Find That Studying The Natural World Is An Opportunity To Observe The Majesty, The Elegance, The Intricacy Of God's Creation.

Wall

Believe

Opportunity

Science Is The Disinterested Search For The Objective Truth About The Material World.

Objective Truth

World

Materials

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.

Real

Justice

Sublime

Chaos Theory, A More Recent Invention, Is Equally Fertile Ground For Those With A Bent For Abusing Sense. It Is Unfortunately Named, For 'chaos' Implies Randomness. Chaos In The Technical Sense Is Not Random At All. It Is Completely Determined, But It Depends Hugely, In Strangely Hard-to-predict Ways, On Tiny Differences In Initial Conditions.

Science

Differences

Way

I Do Feel Visceral Revulsion At The Burka Because For Me It Is A Symbol Of The Oppression Of Women.

Oppression

Revulsion

Visceral

Let Our Tribute To The Dead Be A New Resolve: To Respect People For What They Individually Think, Rather Than Respect Groups For What They Were Collectively Brought Up To Believe.

Believe

Thinking

People

Human Vanity Cherishes The Absurd Notion That Our Species Is The Final Goal Of Evolution.

Selfish

Vanity

Goal

I Great Difficulty Having Any Respect For A Religion That Has So Little Confidence In The Truth Of Its Beliefs That It Feels Reduced To Using Threats In Order To Propagate Those Beliefs.

Order

Religion

Littles

Offense Is What People Take When They Can't Take Argument.

People

Argument

Offense

Certainly Science Should Continue To See Whether We Can Find Evidence For Multiverses That Might Explain Why Our Own Universe Seems To Be So Finely Tuned.

Might

Should

Evidence

It Is An Absurd Law [section 295a Of The Indian Penal Code] But Also Extremely Dangerous Because It Gives Fanatics, Whether They Are Hindus, Catholics Or Muslims, A Licence To Be Offended. It Also Allows People Who Are In Dispute With You To Make Up False Accusations Of Blasphemy.

Law

People

Giving

Pope Francis Seems To Be A Much Nicer Man Than Pope Benedict, But I'm Not Sure That His Views On Things That Really Matter Are All That Different. Whereas Benedict Was Perhaps A Wolf In Wolf's Clothing, Francis Is Perhaps A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing.

Men

Sheep

Views

I Accept That There May Be Things Far Grander And More Incomprehensible Than We Can Possibly Imagine.

May

Imagine

Accepting

Bertrand Russell Used A Hypothetical Teapot In Orbit About Mars For The Same Didactic Purpose. You Have To Be Agnostic About The Teapot, But That Doesn't Mean You Treat The Likelihood Of Its Existence As Being On All Fours With Its Non-existence.

Mean

Atheism

Orbit

Luke [the Gospel Writer] Screws Up His Dating By Tactlessly Mentioning Events That Historians Are Capable Of Independently Checking. There Was Indeed A Census Under Governor Quirinius - A Local Census, Not One Decreed By Caesar Augustus For The Empire As A Whole - But It Happened Too Late In 6 Ad, Long After Herod's Death.

Dating

Long

Religion

You Are Born Into A Dangerous World, There Are All Sorts Of Ways In Which You Could Die, And You Need To Believe Your Parents When They Tell You Don't Go Near The Edge Of The Cliff, Or Don't Pick Up That Snake, Etc. There Could Very Well Be A Darwinian Survival Value In That Sort Of Brain Rule Of Thumb. And A By-product Of That Could Be That You Believe Your Parents When They Tell You About The Juju In The Sky, Or Whatever It Might Be.

Believe

Sky

Snakes

Dna Neither Cares Nor Knows. Dna Just Is. And We Dance To Its Music.

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.

Lying

Rainbow

World

Regarding The Accusations Of Sexual Abuse Of Children By Catholic Priests, Deplorable And Disgusting As Those Abuses Are, They Are Not So Harmful To The Children As The Grievous Mental Harm In Bringing Up The Child Catholic In The First Place.

Children

Catholic

Abuse

It Is Fashionable To Wax Apocalyptic About The Threat To Humanity Posed By The Aids Virus, "mad Cow" Disease, And Many Others, But I Think A Case Can Be Made That Faith Is One Of The World's Great Evils, Comparable To The Smallpox Virus But Harder To Eradicate.

Thinking

Mad Cow Disease

Evil

I Don't Shout People Down. I Argue People Down, Perhaps.

People

Arguing

Public Sharing Is An Important Part Of Science.

Important

My Decision To Be A Scientist Was A Bit Of A Drift Really, More Or Less By Default.

Decision

Scientist

Default

It Would Be Intolerant If I Advocated The Banning Of Religion, But Of Course I Never Have.

Would Be

Courses

Ifs

We Have The Same Genetic Code For All Living Creatures. We Have A Large Number Of Genes That Are Manifestly The Same, But With Detail Differences - They Look Like Different Drafts Of The Same Book. In Extreme Cases, Like A Human And A Beetroot, It's Like The Difference Between Matthew And Luke's Gospel - Clearly They Tell The Same Story, But With Different Words. Whereas With A Human And A Chimp, It's Like Two Different Printings Of Matthew, With A Few Typos In One.

Book

Two

Differences

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.

Technology

Benefits

Made

More Poignant For Us, At Laetoli In Tanzania Are The Companionable Footprints Of Three Real Hominids, Probably Australopithecus Afarensis, Walking Together 3.6 Million Years Ago In What Was Then Fresh Volcanic Ash. Who Does Not Wonder What These Individuals Were To Each Other, Whether They Held Hands Or Even Talked, And What Forgotten Errand They Shared In A Pliocene Dawn?

Real

Hands

Years

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.

Needs

Might

Helping

Theology Is A Non-subject. I'm Not Saying That Professors Of Theology Are Non-professors. They Do Interesting Things, Like Study Biblical History, Biblical Literature. But Theology, The Study Of Gods, The Study Of What Gods Do, Presupposes That Gods Exist. The Only Kind Of Theology That I Take Account Of Are Those Theological Arguments That Actually Argue For The Existence Of God.

Biblical

Interesting

Literature

Natural Selection Is Anything But Random.

Natural

Natural Selection

Selection

Organizing Atheists Is A Bit Like Herding Cats; They Are On The Whole Too Intelligent And Independent Minded To Lend Themselves To Being Herded.

Atheist

Cat

Independent

Religious People Are Atheists About All Other Gods, Atheists Only Take It One God Further.

Religious

Atheist

People

Creationists Eagerly Seek A Gap In Present-day Knowledge Or Understanding. If An Apparent Gap Is Found, It Is Assumed That God, By Default, Must Fill It.

Atheist

Understanding

Religion

That There Is A Continuous Link From Humans To Gorillas, With The Intermediate Species Merely Long Dead, Is Beyond The Understanding Of Speciesists. Tie The Label Homo Sapiens Even To A Tiny Piece Of Insensible Embryonic Tissue, And Its Life Suddenly Leaps To Infinite, Incomputable Value.... Self-styled Pro-lifers, And Others That Indulge In Footling Debates About Exactly When In Its Development A Foetus Becomes Human, Exhibit The Same Discontinuous Mentality. Human, To The Discontinuous Mind, Is An Absolutist Concept. There Can Be No Half Measures. And From This Flows Much Evil.

Self

Indulge In

Ties

Undisguised Clarity Is Easily Mistaken For Arrogance.

Arrogance

Clarity

Mistaken

Any Belief In Miracles Is Flat Contradictory Not Just To The Facts Of Science But To The Spirit Of Science.

Miracle

Facts

Spirit

I Do Think Imagination Is Enormously Valuable, And That Children Should Be Encouraged In Their Imagination. That's Very True.

Children

Thinking

Imagination

Beliefs. Once Entrenched In A Culture, They Persist, Evolve And Diverge, In A Manner Reminiscent Of Biological Evolution.

Culture

Belief

Evolution

I Am Trying To Call Attention To The Elephant In The Room That Everybody Is Too Polite - Or Too Devout - To Notice: Religion, And Specifically The Devaluing Effect That Religion Has On Human Life.

Elephants

Trying

Attention

By All Means Let's Be Open-minded, But Not So Open-minded That Our Brains Drop Out.

Funny

Trust

Laughter

There Are People In The World Who Desperately Want Not To Have To Believe In Darwinism .

Believe

People

World

Even If It Were True That Evolution, Or The Teaching Of Evolution, Encouraged Immorality That Would Not Imply That The Theory Of Evolution Was False.

Teaching

Theory Of Evolution

Immorality

If Ever There Was A Slamming Of The Door In The Face Of Constructive Investigation, It Is The Word Miracle. To A Medieval Peasant, A Radio Would Have Seemed Like A Miracle.

Doors

Miracle

Faces

Such Is The Breathtaking Speciesism Of Our Christian-inspired Attitudes, The Abortion Of A Single Human Zygote Can Arouse More Moral Solicitude And Righteous Indignation Than The Vivasection Of Any Number Of Intelligent Adult Chimpanzees! The Only Reason We Can Be Comfortable With Such A Double Standard Is That The Intermediates Between Humans And Chimps Are All Dead.

Christian

Attitude

Intelligent

A Designer God Cannot Be Used To Explain Organized Complexity Because Any God Capable Of Designing Anything Would Have To Be Complex Enough To Demand The Same Kind Of Explanation In His Own Right.

Design

Religion

Atheism

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.

Fighting

Philosopher

Arguing

I've Seen [lalla Ward] Episodes Of "doctor Who." They're Good, At Least Partly Because The Scripts Were Written By Douglas Adams.

Doctors

Scripts

Episodes

A God Capable Of Continuously Monitoring And Controlling The Individual Status Of Every Particle In The Universe Cannot Be Simple. His Existence Is Going To Need A Mammoth Explanation In Its Own Right.

Simple

Needs

Individual

...there Are No Natural Borderlines In Evolution. The Illusion Of A Borderline Is Created By The Fact That The Evolutionary Intermediates Happen To Be Extinct.

Facts

Evolution

Illusion

Reductionism Is A Dirty Word, And A Kind Of 'holistier Than Thou' Self-righteousness Has Become Fashionable.

Dirty

Self

Kind

Religion: Together We Can Find The Cure.

Together We Can

Religion

Together

Far From Being Demeaning To Human Spiritual Values, Scientific Rationalism Is The Crowning Glory Of The Human Spirit. Of Course You Can Use The Products Of Science To Do Bad Things, But You Can Use Them To Do Good Things Too.

Spirit

Glory

Demeaning

I Don't Think God Is An Explanation At All. It's Simply Redescribing The Problem.

Thinking

Atheism

Problem

Be Warned That If You Wish, As I Do, To Build A Society In Which Individuals Cooperate Generously And Unselfishly Towards A Common Good, You Can Expect Little Help From Biological Nature. Let Us Try To Teach Generosity And Altruism, Because We Are Born Selfish.

Selfish

Generosity

Trying

Christianity, Just As Much As Islam, Teaches Children That Unquestioned Faith Is A Virtue. You Don't Have To Make The Case For What You Believe. If Somebody Announces That It Is Part Of His Faith, The Rest Of Society, Whether Of The Same Faith, Or Another, Or Of None, Is Obliged, By Ingrained Custom, To "respect" It Without Question; Respect It Until The Day It Manifests Itself In A Horrible Massacre Like The Destruction Of The World Trade Center, Or The London Or Madrid Bombings.

Children

Believe

Islam

What I Can't Understand Is Why You Invoke Improbability And Yet You Will Not Admit That You're Shooting Yourself In The Foot By Postulating Something Just As Improbable, Magicking Into Existence The Word God.

Feet

Shooting

Existence

What Are All Of Us But Self-reproducing Robots? We Have Been Put Together By Our Genes And What We Do Is Roam The World Looking For A Way To Sustain Ourselves And Ultimately Produce Another Robot Child.

Life

Children

Self

Being An Atheist Frees You Up To Live This Life Properly, Happily, And Fully.

Atheist

This Life

Words Are Our Servants, Not Our Masters. For Different Purposes, We Find It Convenient To Use Words In Different Senses.

Book

Purpose

Use

I Do Think The Roman Catholic Religion Is A Disease Of The Mind Which Has A Particular Epidemiology Similar To That Of A Virus... Religion Is A Terrific Meme. That's Right. But That Doesn't Make It True And I Care About What's True. Smallpox Virus Is A Terrific Virus. It Does Its Job Magnificently Well. That Doesn't Mean That It's A Good Thing. It Doesn't Mean That I Don't Want To See It Stamped Out.

Jobs

Mean

Thinking

Physicists Have Come Up With Other Explanations. One Is To Say That These Six Constants Are Not Free To Vary. Some Unified Theory Will Eventually Show That They Are As Locked In As The Circumference And The Diameter Of A Circle. That Reduces The Odds Of Them All Independently Just Happening To Fit The Bill.

Circles

Odds

Bills

When I Say That Human Beings Are Just Gene Machines, One Shouldn't Put Too Much Emphasis On The Word 'just.' There Is A Very Great Deal Of Complication, And Indeed Beauty In Being A Gene Machine.

Machines

Too Much

Emphasis

If A Healing Technique Is Demonstrated To Have Curative Properties In Properly Controlled Double-blind Trials, It Ceases To Be Alternative. It Simply, As Diamond Explains, Becomes Medicine.

Healing

Medicine

Technique

Of Course, We Would Love To Know More About The Exact Moment Of Big Bang, But Interposing An Outside Intelligence Does Nothing To Add To That Knowledge, As We Still Know Nothing About The Creation Of That Intelligence.

Bangs

Doe

Add

The Genetic Code Is Not A Binary Code As In Computers, Nor An Eight-level Code As In Some Telephone Systems, But A Quaternary Code With Four Symbols. The Machine Code Of The Genes Is Uncannily Computerlike.

Eight

Machines

Levels

The Trouble With Conspiracies, Even Those That Are To Everybody's Advantage In The Long Run, Is That They Are Open To Abuse. If Manipulators Really Had The Powers Claimed, They Could Win The Lottery Every Week. I Prefer To Point Out That They Could Also Win A Nobel Prize For Discovering Fundamental Physical Forces Hitherto Unknown To Science.

Running

Winning

Long

Only A Tiny Fraction Of Corpses Fossilize, And We Are Lucky To Have As Many Intermediate Fossils As We Do. We Could Easily Have Had No Fossils At All, And Still The Evidence For Evolution From Other Sources, Such As Molecular Genetics And Geographical Distribution, Would Be Overwhelmingly Strong. On The Other Hand, Evolution Makes The Strong Prediction That If A Single Fossil Turned Up In The Wrong Geological Stratum, The Theory Would Be Blown Out Of The Water.

Strong

Hands

Water

We Have Sexual Lust Even Though We Know Perfectly Well That, Because We're Using Contraception, It Is Not Going To Result In The Propagation Of Our Genes. That Doesn't Matter, Because The Lust Was Built Into Our Brains At A Time When There Was No Contraception.

Lust

Brain

Matter

Next Time That Somebody Tells You Something Is True, Why Not Say To Them: 'what Kind Of Evidence Is There For That?' And If They Can't Give You A Good Answer, I Hope You'll Think Very Carefully Before You Believe A Word They Say.

Believe

Thinking

Giving

We, Alone On Earth, Can Rebel Against The Tyranny Of The Selfish Replicators.

Selfish

Rebel

Earth

Religions Do Make Claims About The Universe--the Same Kinds Of Claims That Scientists Make, Except They're Usually False.

Religion

Libertarian

Kind

God Exists, If Only In The Form Of A Meme With High Survival Value, Or Infective Power, In The Environment Provided By Human Culture.

Religion

Survival

Culture

The Whole Of Technology Depends On A Scientific Background, And Of Course Technology Can Be Used For Evil Purposes. You Can't Blame Science For That.

Technology

Evil

Purpose

As Long As We Accept The Principle That Religious Faith Must Be Respected Simply Because It Is Religious Faith, It Is Hard To Withhold Respect From The Faith Of Osama Bin Laden And The Suicide Bombers

Suicide

Religious

Long

The Machine Code Of The Genes Is Uncannily Computer-like. Apart From Differences In Jargon, The Pages Of A Molecular Biology Journal Might Be Interchanged With Those Of A Computer Engineering Journal.

Differences

Engineering

Molecular Biology

Unfortunately, However Much We May Deplore Something, It Does Not Stop Being True.

Doe

May

Being True

Natural Selection Is The Blind Watchmaker, Blind Because It Does Not See Ahead, Does Not Plan Consequences, Has No Purpose In View. Yet The Living Results Of Natural Selection Overwhelmingly Impress Us With The Appearance Of Design As If By A Master Watchmaker, Impress Us With The Illusion Of Design And Planning.

Atheist

Views

Design

Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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