If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the tendency to attribute complex processes to divine intervention instead of seeking understanding.
Richard Dawkins, in this quote, expresses a satirical view on the dismissal of scientific inquiry in favor of religious explanations for complex phenomena. He suggests that instead of attempting to understand challenges in science, some may choose to give up and attribute such complexity to a divine being, highlighting a conflict between faith and reason. Through this, Dawkins promotes a culture of curiosity and learning rather than resignation to ignorance.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of scientific inquiry, one could use this quote to emphasize the necessity of understanding rather than attributing to divine intervention.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
Though dreams can be deceiving; like faces are to hearts, they serve for sweet relieving, when fantasy and reality lie too far apart.
Humility collects the soul into a single point by the power of silence. A truly humble man has no desire to be known or admired by others, but wishes to plunge from himself into himself, to become nothing, as if he had never been born. When he is completely hidden to himself in himself, he is completely with God
Take what you can yourself, and don't let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life.
Every year during their High Holy Days, the Jewish community reminds us all of our need for repentance and forgiveness.
Many a professing Christian is a stumbling-block because his worship is divided. On Sunday he worships God; on weekdays God has little or no place in his thoughts.
The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.
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