1576: Richard Dawkins Quotes on God: A Chronological Guide to a New Atheism Icon
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/27
How do Richard Dawkins’s most influential quotes on God and faith shape modern atheism and the New Atheism movement?
1986: “Natural selection is the blind watchmaker; blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view.”
1989: “… [faith] means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence… The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational enquiry.”
1991: “Growing up in the universe … also means growing out of parochial and supernatural views of the universe … not copping out with superstitious ideas.”
1992: “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”
1993: “Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.”
1995: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
1995: “DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”
1997: “Faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.”
2002: “An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf… We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
2006: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
2006: “I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”
2006: “One of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.”
2006: “Accepting, then, that the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis, albeit a very low-probability one, who should bear the burden of proof?”
2006: “Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.”
2019: “Strictly speaking, it’s impossible to prove that something does not exist. We don’t positively know there are no gods, just as we can’t prove that there are no fairies or pixies or elves or hobgoblins or leprechauns or pink unicorns…”
Last updated May 3, 2025. These terms govern all In-Sight Publishing content—past, present, and future—and supersede any prior notices. In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑ND 4.0; © In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen 2012–Present. All trademarks, performances, databases & branding are owned by their rights holders; no use without permission. Unauthorized copying, modification, framing or public communication is prohibited. External links are not endorsed. Cookies & tracking require consent, and data processing complies with PIPEDA & GDPR; no data from children < 13 (COPPA). Content meets WCAG 2.1 AA under the Accessible Canada Act & is preserved in open archival formats with backups. Excerpts & links require full credit & hyperlink; limited quoting under fair-dealing & fair-use. All content is informational; no liability for errors or omissions: Feedback welcome, and verified errors corrected promptly. For permissions or DMCA notices, email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com. Site use is governed by BC laws; content is “as‑is,” liability limited, users indemnify us; moral, performers’ & database sui generis rights reserved.
In-Sight Publishing 