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All life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...more

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Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

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Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, w...more

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I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our ti...more

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The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe.

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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. ...more

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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 knowledg...more

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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 b...more

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Science has taught us, against all intuition, that apparently solid things like crystals and rocks are really almost entirely composed of empty space....more

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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.

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I am passionate about the truth. Passion is very different from fundamentalism.

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It's a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, power, couldn't think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to...more

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Religion is a distraction from true education.

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It's been suggested that if the super-naturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they...more

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There was something built into the human brain by natural selection which was once useful, and which now manifests itself as religion.