3 Richard Dawkins Quotes on Reasoning

Richard Dawkins quotes on reasoning

54. Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, 'I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection'. I have dubbed this kind of fallacy 'the Argument from Personal Incredulity'. Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience.

66. It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine.

99. It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?