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If It Is Solely An Evolutionary Convenience, There Is Really No Such Thing As Good Or Evil.
-Richard Dawkins
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If It Is Solely

Richard Dawkins
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If It Is Solely An Evolutionary Convenience, There Is Really No Such Thing As Good Or Evil.

Understanding the Quote: "if it is solely an evolutionary convenience, there is really no such..."

This quote by Richard Dawkins reflects deeply on the theme of evil. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Evil, Convenience, Ifs, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Richard Dawkins interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is celebrated for insightful thoughts on evil and convenience. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Evil
Convenience
Ifs
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Facts
Spirit
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Successful
Design
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Reason
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Atheism
Wish
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Gratitude
Morning
The Feature Of Living Matter That Most Demands Explanation Is That It Is Almost Unimaginably Complicated In Directions That Convey A Powerful Illusion Of Deliberate Design.
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Design
Demand
What Francis [collins] Was Just Saying About Genesis Was, Of Course, A Little Private Quarrel Between Him And His Fundamentalist Colleagues. It Would Be Unseemly For Me To Enter In Except To Suggest That He'd Save Himself An Awful Lot Of Trouble If He Just Simply Ceased To Give Them The Time Of Day.
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Would Be
Littles
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Levels
Genes
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World
God Delusion
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Age
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Justice
Sublime
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Planning
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Children
Parent
There's No Point Of Having Faith If You Have Evidence.
Faith
Belief
Evidence
The Other Way Is The Multiverse Way. That Says That Maybe The Universe We Are In Is One Of A Very Large Number Of Universes. The Vast Majority Will Not Contain Life Because They Have The Wrong Gravitational Constant Or The Wrong This Constant Or That Constant. But As The Number Of Universes Climbs, The Odds Mount That A Tiny Minority Of Universes Will Have The Right Fine-tuning.
Numbers
Odds
Tuning
Faith Is The Lack Of Evidence, And It Shouldn't Be That Difficult To Convince People That The Right Reason To Believe Something Is That There Is Evidence For It. People Do Not Innately Go For This View, But Nevertheless It Is Not That Difficult To Teach.
Believe
Views
People
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
Needs
Use
Records
There Is No Reason To Regard God As Immune From Consideration Along The Spectrum Of Probabilities. And There Is Certainly No Reason To Suppose That, Just Because God Can Be Neither Proved Nor Disproved, His Probability Of Existence Is 50 Per Cent.
Reason
Consideration
Existence
I Am An Enthusiastic Darwinian, But I Think Darwinism Is Too Big A Theory To Be Confined To The Narrow Context Of The Gene.
Thinking
Genes
Bigs
All Life Evolves By The Differential Survival Of Replicating Entities.
Humanity
Survival
Entity
False Beliefs Can Be Every Bit As Consoling As True Ones, Right Up Until The Moment Of Disillusionment.
Belief
Moments
Consoling
Very Close Cousins Like Humans And Chimps Have Almost All Their Genes In Common. Slightly Less Close Cousins Like Humans And Monkeys Still Have Recognizably The Same Genes. You Could Carry On Right On Down To Humans And Bacteria, And You Will Find Continuous Compelling Evidence For The Hierarchical Tree Of Cousinship.
Cousin
Tree
Monkeys
When I Sign Books, I Get Lines Of People And What They Usually Say Is: "thank You. You Have Changed My Life." I Am Really Moved By That.
Book
People
Lines
I Don't Think God Is An Explanation At All. It's Simply Redescribing The Problem. We Are Trying To Understand How We Have Got A Complicated World, And We Have An Explanation In Terms Of A Slightly Simpler World, And We Explain That In Terms Of A Slightly Simpler World And It All Hangs Together Down To An Ultimately Simple World. Now, God Is Not An Explanation Of That Kind. God Himself Cannot Be Simple If He Has Power To Do All The Things He Is Supposed To Do.
Simple
Thinking
Complicated World
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
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
I Have A Strong Feeling That The Subject Of Evolution Is Beautiful Without The Excuse Of Creationists Needing To Be Bashed.
Beautiful
Strong
Feelings
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
Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones, But Words Can Never Hurt Me." The Adage Is True As Long As You Don't Really Believe The Words. But If Your Whole Upbringing, And Everything You Have Ever Been Told By Parents, Teachers And Priests, Has Led You To Believe, Really Believe, Utterly And Completely, That Sinners Burn In Hell (or Some Other Obnoxious Article Of Doctrine Such As That A Woman Is The Property Of Her Husband), It Is Entirely Plausible That Words Could Have A More Long-lasting And Damaging Effect Than Deeds.
Teacher
Hurt
Husband
I Could Easily Believe That Religion Could Enhance Health And Hence Survival, And That Therefore There Could Be Indeed Be Literally Darwinian Survival Value, Darwinian Selection In Favor Of Religion. None Of That Of Course Bears At All Upon The Truth Value Of The Claims Made By Religions.
Believe
Survival
Favors
[alternative Medicine Is Defined As] That Set Of Practices That Cannot Be Tested, Refuse To Be Tested Or Consistently Fail Tests.
Medicine
Practice
Alternatives
Creationists Are Possibly Gaining More Political Power. In The U.s., You Are Constantly Hearing Stories Of School Boards Harassing Teachers And Trying To Get Textbooks Banned.
Teacher
School
Political
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
I Detest 'jingle Bells,' 'white Christmas,' 'rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer,' And The Obscene Spending Bonanza That Nowadays Seems To Occupy Not Just December, But November And Much Of October, Too.
Christmas
White
Jingles
I Do Sometimes Accuse People Of Ignorance, But That Is Not Intended To Be An Insult. I'm Ignorant Of Lots Of Things. Ignorance Is Something That Can Be Remedied By Education.
Ignorance
People
Ignorant
We Are Machines Built By Dna Whose Purpose Is To Make More Copies Of The Same Dna. ... This Is Exactly What We Are For. We Are Machines For Propagating Dna, And The Propagation Of Dna Is A Self-sustaining Process. It Is Every Living Object's Sole Reason For Living.
Life
Science
Dna
Science Is Wonderful, Science Is Important, And So Are Children, So Are Young People, And So What Could Be Better Than To Write A Science Book For Young People?
Children
Book
Writing
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
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 Should Take Astrology Seriously. No, I Don't Mean We Should Believe In It. I Am Talking About Fighting It Seriously Instead Of Humouring It As A Piece Of Harmless Fun.
Fun
Believe
Mean
The Assignment Of Purpose To Everything Is Called Teleology. Children Are Native Teleologists, And Many Never Grow Out Of It.
Children
Purpose
Assignments
My Last Vestige Of 'hands Off Religion' Respect Disappeared In The Smoke And Choking Dust Of September 11, 2001, Followed By The 'national Day Of Prayer,' When Prelates And Pastors Did Their Tremulous Martin Luther King Impersonations And Urged People Of Mutually Incompatible Faiths To Hold Hands, United In Homage To The Very Force That Caused The Problem In The First Place.
Kings
Prayer
Dust
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
I Would, Like Any Other Scientist, Willingly Change My Mind If The Evidence Led Me To Do So. So I Care About What's True, I Care About Evidence, I Care About Evidence As The Reason For Knowing What Is True. It Is True That I Come Across Rather Passionate Sometimes - And That's Because I Am Passionate About The Truth... I Do Get Very Impatient With Humbug, With Cant, With Fakery, With Charlatans.
Knowing
Mind
Atheism
Ironically, I Originally Wrote The Tweet With Jews And Thought, That Might Give Offense. And So I Thought I Better Change It.
Giving
Might
Tweet
... You Need More Than Luck To Navigate Successfully Through A Thousand Sieves In Succession.
Luck
Needs
Thousand
By All Means Let's Be Open-minded, But Not So Open-minded That Our Brains Drop Out.
Funny
Trust
Laughter
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
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
Most Of What We Strive For In Our Modern Life Uses The Apparatus Of Goal Seeking That Was Originally Set Up To Seek Goals In The State Of Nature.
Goal
Modern Life
Use
Science Boosts Its Claim To Truth By Its Spectacular Ability To Make Matter And Energy Jump Through Hoops On Command, And To Predict What Will Happen And When.
Atheism
Energy
Matter
Evolution Normally Does Not Come To A Halt, But Constantly 'tracks' The Changing Environment.
Track
Doe
Changing Environment
Many People Want To Send Their Children To Faith Schools Because They Get Good Exam Results, But They're Not Foolish Enough To Believe That It's Because Of Faith That They Get Good Exam Results.
Children
Believe
School
[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
You Could Give Aristotle A Tutorial. And You Could Thrill Him To The Core Of His Being. Aristotle Was An Encyclopedic Polymath, An All Time Intellect. Yet Not Only Can You Know More Than Him About The World, You Also Can Have A Deeper Understanding Of How Everything Works. Such Is The Privilege Of Living After Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick And Their Colleagues.
Giving
Understanding
Tutorial
I Think That A New Kind Of Replicator Has Recently Emerged On This Very Planet. It Is Staring Us In The Face. It Is Still In Its Infancy, Still Drfiting Clumsily About In Its Primeval Soup, But Already It Is Achieving Evolutionary Change At A Rate Which Leaves The Old Gene Panting Far Behind.
Thinking
Soup
Faces
To Fill A World With ... Religions Of The Abrahamic Kind, Is Like Littering The Streets With Loaded Guns. Do Not Be Surprised If They Are Used.
Gun
Atheism
Littering
All The World’s Muslims Have Fewer Nobel Prizes Than Trinity College, Cambridge. They Did Great Things In The Middle Ages, Though.
College
Age
World
Undisguised Clarity Is Easily Mistaken For Arrogance.
Arrogance
Clarity
Mistaken
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
We Who Are Atheists Are Also A-fairyists, A-teapotists, And A-unicornists, But We Don't Have To Bother Saying So.
Atheist
Religion
Atheism
Segregation Has No Place In The Education System.
Segregation
Education System
Our Leaders Have Described The Recent Atrocity With The Customary Cliche: Mindless Cowardice. Mindless May Be A Suitable Word For The Vandalising Of A Telephone Box. It Is Not Helpful For Understanding What Hit New York On September 11. Those People Were Not Mindless And They Were Certainly Not Cowards. On The Contrary, They Had Sufficiently Effective Minds Braced With An Insane Courage, And It Would Pay Us Mightily To Understand Where That Courage Came From. It Came From Religion.
New York
People
Leader
It's About Time We Start Criticizing Faith.
Criticize
What Lies At The Heart Of Every Living Thing Is Not A Fire, Not Warm Breath, Not A 'spark Of Life.' It Is Information, Words, Instructions... If You Want To Understand Life, Don't Think About Vibrant, Throbbing Gels And Oozes, Think About Information Technology.
Lying
Heart
Technology
A God Who Is Capable Of Sending Intelligible Signals To Millions Of People Simultaneously, And Of Receiving Messages From All Of Them Simultaneously, Cannot Be, Whatever Else He Might Be, Simple. Such Bandwidth!
Atheist
Simple
People
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
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
This Person Should Have Been Aborted Years Ago.
Should Have
Years
Persons
Something Pretty Mysterious Had To Give Rise To The Origin Of The Universe.
Giving
Mysterious
Universe
We Animals Are The Most Complicated Things In The Known Universe.
Animal
Complicated
Known
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
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.
Selfish
Science
Survival
All The Great Religions Have A Place For Awe, For Ecstatic Transport At The Wonder And Beauty Of Creation.
Wonder
Creation
Transport
The Human Psyche Has Two Great Sicknesses: The Urge To Carry Vendetta Across Generations, And The Tendency To Fasten Group Labels On People Rather Than See Them As Individuals. Abrahamic Religion Gives Strong Sanction To Both-and Mixes Explosively With Both. Only The Willfully Blind Could Fail To Implicate The Divisive Force Of Religion In Most, If Not All, Of The Violent Enmities In The World Today.
Strong
Two
Giving
An Atheist Is Just Somebody Who Feels About Yahweh The Way Any Decent Christian Feels About Thor Or Baal Or The Golden Calf. We Are All Atheists About Most Of The Gods That Humanity Has Ever Believed In. Some Of Us Just Go One God Further.
God
Christian
Atheist
The God Of The Old Testament Is Arguably The Most Unpleasant Character In All Fiction: Jealous And Proud Of It; A Petty, Unjust, Unforgiving Control-freak; A Vindictive, Bloodthirsty Ethnic Cleanser; A Misogynistic, Homophobic, Racist, Infanticidal, Genocidal, Filicidal, Pestilential, Megalomaniacal, Sadomasochistic, Capriciously Malevolent Bully.
God
Religious
Atheist
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
Francis [collins] Keeps Saying Things Like "from The Perspective Of A Believer." Once You Buy Into The Position Of Faith, Then Suddenly You Find Yourself Losing All Of Your Natural Skepticism And Your Scientific - Really Scientific - Credibility. I'm Sorry To Be So Blunt.
Sorry
Perspective
Finding Yourself
Evolution May Explain Some Features Of The Moral Law, But It Can't Explain Why It Should Have Any Real Significance.
Real
Should Have
Law
It Is Quite True That Many Scientists, Many Physicists, Maintain That The Physical Constants, The Half Dozen Or So Numbers That Physicists Have To Simply Assume In Order To Derive The Rest Of Their Understanding ... Have To Be Assumed. You Can't Provide A Rationale For Why Those Numbers Are There. Physicists Have Calculated That If Any Of These Numbers Was A Little Bit Different, The Universe As We Know It Wouldn't Exist.
Numbers
Order
Understanding
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.
Strong
Believe
Religion
We've All Been Brought Up With The View That Religion Has Some Kind Of Special Privileged Status. You're Not Allowed To Criticise It.
Views
Special
Kind
We Are A Very, Very Unusual Species.
Unusual
Species
It Is Important Not To Confuse Race And Religion.
Race
Important
Race And Religion
After Sleeping Through A Hundred Million Centuries, We Have Finally Opened Our Eyes On A Sumptuous Planet, Sparkling With Color, Bountiful With Life.
Sleep
Eye
Color
Disagreements Between Incompatible Beliefs Cannot Be Settled By Reasoned Argument Because Reasoned Argument Is Drummed Out Of Those Trained In Religion From The Cradle.
Belief
Argument
Cradle
In The Case Of Stalinism, People Actually Distorted Science, Because It Was For The Good Of The Communist Party.
Party
People
Communist
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