Richard Dawkins on atheism

Natural selection, the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process that Darwin discovered, has no purpose in mind. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

Paley’s argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…

C. S. Lewis1898–1963Mere Christianity

A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere⁠—‘Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963Surprised by Joy (1955), Ch. XII: “Guns and Good Company”

If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion.

Goncourt brothersJanuary 24, 1868; translation from Robert Baldick (ed. and trans.) Pages from the Goncourt Journal (London: Oxford University Press, 1962) p. 135.

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