“I shall not make an argument ad hominem. My argument is ad bullshitem.”

Why, I can’t help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself.

Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private revelation.

Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation.

Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility.

Religious faith, is a state of mind, that leads people to believe in something, it doesn’t matter what, without a whisper of doubt, or a whiff of evidence, and believe so strongly in some cases, that they are prepare to kill and die for it, without the need for further justification.

Religion teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers. It’s a sort of crime against childhood.

Our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

When I am dying, I should like my life taken out under general anaesthetic, exactly as if it were a diseased appendix.

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

Such delusions of grandeur to think that a God with a hundred billion galaxies on his mind would give a tuppenny damn who you sleep with, or indeed whether you believe in him.

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument.

When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.

Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don’t be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.

Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.

In a debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thy antagonists than offer him any of thy own; for thus thou wilt fight him in his own country.

The great charm in argument is really finding one’s own opinions, not other people’s.

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.