Richard Dawkins

Evolution never looks to the future.

Even if you believe a creator god invented the laws of physics, would you so insult him as to suggest that he might capriciously and arbitrarily violate them in order to walk on water, or turn water into wine as a cheap party trick at a wedding?

What matters is not the facts but how you discover and think about them.

An Internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea. Instead of mutating by random change and spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, Internet memes are altered deliberately by human creativity. There is no attempt at accuracy of copying, as with genes - and as with memes in their original version.

The Bible should be taught, but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction, myth, poetry, anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.

I love romantic poetry.

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree.

Segregation has no place in the education system.

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.

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Science - or the products of science like technology - is just a way of achieving something real, something that happens, something that works.

Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense.

I'm fascinated by the idea that genetics is digital. A gene is a long sequence of coded letters, like computer information. Modern biology is becoming very much a branch of information technology.

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?

I do think imagination is enormously valuable, and that children should be encouraged in their imagination. That's very true.

I accept that there may be things far grander and more incomprehensible than we can possibly imagine.

By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.