Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the lack of evidence in religious faith while highlighting the pride that stems from it.
Richard Dawkins emphasizes that religious faith is characterized by a notable absence of evidence to support its claims, and he argues that this very independence from evidence is something that believers often celebrate. The statement suggests that rather than viewing faith through a lens of doubt or scrutiny, many individuals flaunt their faith as a point of pride, despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of empirical support.
In practice
During a debate on belief systems, one might reference this quote to highlight the conversation about the reliance on evidence in faith.
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 wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.
I think sometimes if you are alone, you are freer because your time is your own.
I haven't any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it enough it would cease to be language at all. As when you try to turn the gas-ring a little lower still, and it merely goes out.
If you have a great idea, you should be able to communicate it as well. It's like the sound of one hand clapping. You have a great idea but aren't able to express it - well, how great was the idea?
I learned that money can be a lot of things,It can be something that is hoarded, fought over, protected, stolen and withheld. Or it can be like an energy, fueled by the desire, will, creative interest, need to laugh, of large groups of people. And it can be shuffled and pushed around and pooled together to fuel a common interest, jokes about garbage, penises and parenthood.
A state arises,as I conceive,out of the needs of mankind;no one is self-sufficing,but all of us have many wants
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