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Book: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
Quotes of Book: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the
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  1. Richard Dawkins _ The Blind Watchmaker: Why the

    If a curiously selective plague came along and killed all people of intermediate height, 'tall' and 'short' would come to have just as precise a meaning as 'bird' or 'mammal'. The same is true of human ethics and law. Our legal and moral systems are deeply species-bound. The director of a zoo is legally entitled to 'put down' a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might 'put down' a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees in this way is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! {T}he only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.
    book-quoteethicstaxonomyspeciesism

  2. Richard Dawkins _ The Blind Watchmaker: Why the

    Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.
    book-quoteevolutionnatural-selectionteleology

  3. Richard Dawkins _ The Blind Watchmaker: Why the

    The important thing to remember about mathematics is not to be frightened
    book-quote

  4. Richard Dawkins _ The Blind Watchmaker: Why the

    …the Genesis story is just one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants.
    book-quotesciencemythologycreation-myths

  5. Richard Dawkins _ The Blind Watchmaker: Why the

    The resemblance of the signs of the zodiac to the animals after which they are named... is as unimpressive as the predictions of astrologers.
    book-quote

  6. Richard Dawkins _ The Blind Watchmaker: Why the

    Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.
    book-quoteexistenceevolutionnatural-selection

  7. Richard Dawkins _ The Blind Watchmaker: Why the

    The Bishop goes on to the human eye, asking rhetorically, and with the implication that there is no answer, 'How could an organ so complex evolve?' This is not an argument, it is simply an affirmation of incredulity."
    book-quote
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