If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the tendency to attribute complex processes to divine intervention instead of seeking understanding.
Richard Dawkins, in this quote, expresses a satirical view on the dismissal of scientific inquiry in favor of religious explanations for complex phenomena. He suggests that instead of attempting to understand challenges in science, some may choose to give up and attribute such complexity to a divine being, highlighting a conflict between faith and reason. Through this, Dawkins promotes a culture of curiosity and learning rather than resignation to ignorance.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of scientific inquiry, one could use this quote to emphasize the necessity of understanding rather than attributing to divine intervention.
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.
I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.
In the meantime, I would drink, rest, and ponder the meaning of this mob.
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
The apartment was built at the edge of a high cliff so that when you looked out the back window it seemed as if you were twelve floors up instead of four. It was very much like living on the edge of the world - a last resting place before the final big drop.
While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil.
The idol is the expression of religion.
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