No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. His existence is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that a deity with such immense capabilities must possess a complex nature, challenging the idea of divine simplicity.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins argues against the concept of a simple God by asserting that if such a being exists with the power to monitor and control every element of the universe, then this entity must be extraordinarily complex. This statement invites readers to reconsider traditional notions of divinity, particularly the idea that God is fundamentally simple and understandable. Instead, he implies that any being with such vast powers would require a detailed and complex explanation.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a debate on the existence of God.
More from Richard Dawkins
All quotes →If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
Similar quotes
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.
We know that no algorithm can solve global poverty; no pill can cure a chronic illness; no box of chocolates can mend a broken relationship; no educational DVD can transform a child into a baby Einstein; no drone strike can end a terrorist conflict. Sadly, there is no such thing as 'One Tip to a Flat Stomach.'
Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Celebration of Independence Day with great pomp and show was quite appropriate when we were fighting for independence which we had neither seen nor handled. Now we have handled it and we seem to be disillusioned. At least - I am, even if you are not. What are we celebrating today? Surely, not our disillusionment.
The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion.