Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that religion transforms uncertain beliefs into accepted truths through the influence of institutions and the enduring nature of tradition.
Richard Dawkins points out that religion relies on the establishment of institutions to solidify beliefs that can often be untested or uncertain. Over time, these beliefs can become deeply ingrained in culture and society, reinforcing their status as 'truth' despite a lack of empirical evidence. The passage of time plays a crucial role in this process, as repeated affirmation and institutional support can create a distorted perception of reality where faith-based beliefs are treated as undeniable truths.
In practice
In a lecture on the influence of belief systems in society.
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.
All truths wait in all things.
The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.
Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.
I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.
Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.
Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.
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