A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!
Interpretation
The quote suggests that a deity capable of interacting with millions of people at once must possess incredible complexity.
Richard Dawkins emphasizes the complexity attributed to a god who can communicate with and receive messages from countless individuals simultaneously. He argues that such an ability cannot evoke a simplistic view of divinity, but rather demands recognition of a more intricate nature that transcends conventional understanding of existence.
In practice
This quote can be used during a debate on the nature of divinity and its implications.
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
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.
As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.
The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question, and one that I have always tried to ask.
It is inconceivable to me that a million or three million or half a million human beings will think and feel precisely the same way on any single subject.
The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.
We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.
Chess holds deep wisdoms of the people. It is truly an image of life, the reflection of human fate that has shown us the earthly way of suffering in darkness and permanent shortage of time. Like in chess, we encounter all kinds of traps, mistakes, settlements, sacrifices, kings, and queens, doubled pawns, and extraordinary moves while we are on the board ourselves.
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