“The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.”
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Author detail
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author. He was formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and was a fellow of New College, Oxford. Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book *The Selfish Gene*, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to evolutionary biology with the concept, presented in his book *The Extended Phenotype*, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms. Dawkins is well known for his candid criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book *The Blind Watchmaker*, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. ([Source][1]) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins
Quotes
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“The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.”
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“The interesting question would be whether there's a Darwinian process, a kind of selection process whereby some memes are more likely to spread than others, because people like them, because...”
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“Secularism is categorically not saying that the religious may not speak out publicly or have a say in public life. It is about saying that religion alone should not confer a privileged say i...”
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“I did a film that's on YouTube of me reading hate mail with a woman playing the cello in the background.”
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“Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.”
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“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...”
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“In the original introduction to the word meme in the last chapter of 'The Selfish Gene,' I did actually use the metaphor of a 'virus.' So when anybody talks about something going viral on th...”
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“I didn't know children were expected to have literary heroes, but I certainly had one, and I even identified with him at one time: Doctor Dolittle, whom I now half identify with the Charles...”
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“My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence, but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural se...”
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“If you look up at the Milky Way through the eyes of Carl Sagan, you get a feeling in your chest of something greater than yourself. And it is. But it's not supernatural.”
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“When a company seeks a new chief executive officer, or a university a new vice-chancellor, enormous trouble is taken to find the best person.”
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“Christopher Hitchens was a writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical allusion far wider than anybody I know.”
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“The whole idea of creating saints, it's pure 'Monty Python.' They have to clock up two miracles.”
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“From a Darwinian perspective, it is clear what pain is doing. It's a warning: 'Don't do that again.' If you burn yourself, you're never going to pick up a live coal again.”
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“At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes.”
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“Evil is a miscellaneous collection of nasty things that nasty people do.”
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“The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.”
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“How can you take seriously someone who likes to believe something because he finds it 'comforting'?”
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“In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science because it was for the good of the Communist Party.”
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“The very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible. Not only should we not get our moral compass from religion, as a matter of fact we don't.”
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