Here are different interpertations of what this individual believes to be true concerning religion.

What are your thoughts on the following quotes?

A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.

Richard Dawkins

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Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

Richard Dawkins

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For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

Richard Dawkins

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I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

Richard Dawkins

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The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Richard Dawkins

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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?

Richard Dawkins

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What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all?

Richard Dawkins

Great quotes

who cares?

Those are nice quotes.

I have read his latest book, The God Delusion, and I have 2 of his BBC documentaries. (The Root of All Evil, and Enemies of Reason)
Everything by him has been really well done, and I really have yet to really disagree with any of his views.

I think many of them are aimed at the Mediterranean picture of religion.



No religion is not a scientific theory. Religions are genuinely a construction of folklore. Sometimes that folklore is intuitive and well-meaning as in the case of many pantheisic religions, and sometimes it quite corrupt and authoritive as in the case of the Mediterranean cultures.




I wouldn't call faith a cop-out in general. I think blind faith in dogma even when evidence suggests other wise is stupid. But faith in general is not a cop-out. Faith does not mean absolute belief. You can have faith that someone who is nasty will see the light and become a better person. Having that faith doesn't mean that you believe they will, it simply means that you believe it's possible.

I think a total lack of faith in anything that hasn't yet been shown to be true is pretty mundane and leaves no room for optimism in cases where things don't look like they are going well.

I've often had faith that things would work out well in spite of the fact that they were going poorly at the time (the current "evidence"), yet ultimately my faith was well placed as thing did indeed work out in the end.

So I suppose this all depends on how a person views 'faith'.




No argument here. But what's the point?

Maybe he's just trying to say that all life forms are equal?

Owl be the first to agree with that as I'm a pantheist and I believe that everything is ultimately one.



Well, again. Which "religion" is he talking about? My religion is all about getting to know and understand the natural world.

So again I think he's speaking of 'religion' in a very limited context of just the patriarchal picture of dogmatic authoritarians who don't want to be questioned because they know that if their dogma is questioned its flaws will become blatantly obvious.



I totally agree with that. However the pantheistic religions that I've been studying not only invite inquiry but they encourage it!

So again, it appears that Mr. Dawkins has a very limited view of what constitutes 'religion'.



Personally I believe in fairies.

And I realize that many believers in Mediterranean dogma will laugh at that, but what's the difference between a fairy and an angel other than the size and shape of their wings?





Well, again I would need to ask Mr. Dawkins what he means by 'theology'.

I agree that the Mediterranean theologies have nothing new to offer that hadn't already been realized previously.

What I find in the study of pantheistic view is that often times I presented with food for thought that causes me to think about things that do seem to be "obvious" but only in in hindsight. So I find the study of pantheistic religions enlightening.

I'm not sure if they would quality as 'theology' though. Some people perfer to simply refer to them as ancestral wisdom.

I think the major point that hasn't even been touched on by Dawkins in the quotes above is why anyone would believe that any doctrine is the 'word of God' when God can supposedly contact anyone at anytime.

The very idea that an all-powerful all-wise God would need to write a book is truly ludicous.

Pantheism doesn't claim to have any texts written by any gods.

Perhaps that's a major point that needs to be addressed.

I think what Dawkins meant when he said that religion is a scientific theory is really more specific denominations.

Some denominations make direct claims about existence and the nature of reality. Things that science CAN speak on, and this makes then claims that trespass on scientific explanations.

Great quotes. The man has a lot to teach, I think the religious and non religious both have things to learn from this man.

good quotes enjoyed them thanks.