192 quotes
Is trans ideology becoming a religion? Well, it has some of the attributes. [...] Of course, it's not a religion in the sense of believing in the supernatural, but the zealous hunting down and punishing of heretics, that's very like a religion.
When I tweet on politics, even if I merely post a url, I get many replies like “Stick to science. Politics is not your field.” Which field, then, does qualify one to hold a political opinion? Are scientists specifically disqualified from thinking & caring about the world?
Saw a down-and-out in Seattle last night. His sign said not "I need food" or "I need a job" but "I need a fat bitch". What could this mean?
I don't want to sound callous. I mean, even if I have nothing to offer, that doesn't matter, because that still doesn't mean that what anybody else has to offer therefore has to be true.
An Interview by Sheena McDonald (1995)
There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.
Darwin's Dangerous Disciple: An Interview by Frank Miele (1995)
The first cause cannot have been an intelligence, let alone an intelligence that answers prayers and enjoys being worshiped. Intelligent, creative, complex, statistically improbable things come late into the universe, as the product of evolution or some other process of gradual escalation from simple beginnings. They come late into the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it.
... you need more than luck to navigate successfully through a thousand sieves in succession.
River out of Eden (1995)
How do we account for the current paranormal vogue in the popular media? Perhaps it has something to do with the millennium – in which case it's depressing to realise that the millennium is still three years away.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)
You don't have to be a scientist – you don't have to play the Bunsen burner – in order to understand enough science to overtake your imagined need and fill that fancied gap. Science needs to be released from the lab into the culture.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)
If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn't been tested or it has failed its tests.
The Enemies of Reason (2007)
Just because science can't in practice explain things like the love that motivates a poet to write a sonnet, that doesn't mean that religion can. It's a simple and logical fallacy to say, 'If science can't do something, therefore religion can'.
Orb webs in real life do their business largely in two dimensions. If the mesh is too coarse, flies pass straight through. If the mesh is too fine, rival spiders will achieve nearly the same result at less cost in silk, and will therefore leave behind more progeny to carry on their economically more prudent genes. Natural selection finds the efficient compromise.
Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)