Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins FRS FRSLis an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 March 1941
CityNairobi, Kenya
lucky sun chance
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.
dangerous
Yesterday's dangerous idea is today's orthodoxy and tomorrow's cliché.
feelings understanding atheism
My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.
beautiful extraordinary-beauty ideas
What I can't understand is why you can't see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing - that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?
children complaining dull
However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn't this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place?
health theory-of-evolution inspire
Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.
ideas next excitement
By dislaiming the idea of a next life, we can take more excitement in this one!
together-we-can religion together
Religion: Together we can find the cure.
atheist this-life
Being an atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily, and fully.
atheist religion atheism
Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
moon religion atheism
Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.
children mind vulnerable
Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.
atheist belief results
Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.
selfish science survival
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.